




































































Class / c_ 

Book_._:_' JSh. _ 

I 

GoRTight N 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







































EGYPTIAN LOVE 

























EGYPTIAN LOVE 

BY 

STEPHEN HAWEIS 



GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1924 











AUTHOR'S NOTE 

I have spelled Fijian words as they are writ¬ 
ten. In the Fijian language all B’s are preceded 
by an imaginary M. Lakeba is pronounced 
Lakemba. D’s have N before them and Q is 
pronounced NG. There being no need for the 
hard C as well as the K, the missionaries, who 
designed the Fijian alphabet, decided to use C 
for the TH sound. The vowels are pronounced 
like Italian or French vowels, not like the 
English. 


S. H. 










EGYPTIAN LOVE 



















EGYPTIAN LOVE 


CHAPTER I 



BUS and I were leaning over the rail at 


IjL the stern end of the ship. We were both 
steerage passengers, lost to the world among nine 
hundred emigrants who were abandoning Eng¬ 
land for Australia. It was in the days before 
the war when every outbound ship was carrying 
a like number of England’s best artisans to seek 
their fortunes in a land which, they hoped, 
would offer them better prospects of making a 
living than at home. We had become ac¬ 
quainted on board and, as I joined the ship at 
Naples, had known one another slightly for 
about a fortnight. 

It had been a remarkable fortnight for me in 
many ways but I had found my interest in the 
varied experiences of the steerage narrowing 
down to my attraction to the girl at my side who 
was so remote and inaccessible, and for whom at 
the same time I sensed an intimate feeling which 
I could not explain to myself. Looking back¬ 
ward across the time which was then before us, 
it seems astonishing to me that we did not recog- 







2 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


nize each other sooner and yet, humanly speak¬ 
ing, it is not surprising that we were somewhat 
long in getting acquainted, for we were about 
as far removed from one another as it is pos¬ 
sible to imagine. 

Abus was a Welsh peasant girl from Maesteg, 
a tiny village in the mountains somewhere, who 
had almost no knowledge of anything beyond 
what she would naturally have acquired among 
such surroundings while I, Joseph Pyecote, was 
at three-and-twenty a somewhat mature product 
of English public-school and university train¬ 
ing. I had an exceedingly good opinion of 
myself and was a good deal of a prig. I had 
recently taken a respectable first in the History 
Tripos at Cambridge, which I regarded as the 
hub of the universe; I had played football and 
tennis for Peterhouse, my tiny but excellent 
college; had been tried, in my third year, for the 
University team at soccer, and taken one or two 
minor University prizes; done very creditably, 
on the whole. I had, I say, a very good opinion 
of myself and had never had any reason to think 
otherwise, though I had a veneer of conven¬ 
tional modesty for everyday use. I was an only 
son and a considerably spoilt and petted darl¬ 
ing. My parents were somewhat prominent in 
the county (we live in Kent) and very well off. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 3 

I had a private income of my own, inherited 
from my grandmother, which, together with a 
personable body, had been a good deal admired 
by a number of girls and their mothers for some 
years. I was at the stage when almost any girl 
would do and every girl was fair game, a game 
to which I devoted myself assiduously when not 
otherwise actively employed. But, catholic as 
were my tastes in women, there was not much to 
choose from in the steerage of the R. M. S. 
Orama, and the study of my fellow man, for 
which I had conceived the notion of travelling 
in the steerage to Australia, had already begun 
to pall. 

Both I and my chum, Robert A. Ellicot of 
Emmanuel, had a nebulous idea of a literary 
future, but we had been sufficiently unsettled by 
three happy years at Cambridge not to want to 
apply ourselves to business or to begin any kind 
of routine work in a hurry. We told ourselves 
that we needed the experience which a tour 
round the world would give us, and we were de¬ 
termined to see as much of the world as we could 
in the time before we settled down to anything. 
Why not, since we were both independent? 
The idea of travelling steerage appealed to both 
of us instantaneously and we had started off 
within a fortnight from the memorable evening 


4 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

when the idea occurred to me, and with little 
more preparation than if we had meant to spend 
a week-end in Paris. 

At most times the small deck space reserved 
for steerage passengers was littered with hu¬ 
manity. Whoever had been able to procure a 
camp-chair was occupying it proudly or hoping 
that the owner would not suddenly appear to 
claim it. Those for whom there were no seats 
leaned heavily on the gunwale or disposed them¬ 
selves to sleep as long as possible by the simple 
expedient of tilting their caps over their un¬ 
shaven faces, most of which were now peeling 
with sunburn. The promenade was a medley 
of orange peel and cracker boxes, broken food 
and crushed chocolate cream. Wrappers of this 
chased covers of that whenever the wind blew 
downward; there were dozens of shapeless 
mothers attendant upon loud-voiced bundles, 
and children innumerable massaging their 
grubby pink cheeks with bread and jam. I can 
still see that vision of caps and billycock hats, 
collarless shirts, waistcoats parted in the middle 
revealing gray flannel or loud-striped shirts a 
fortnight gone, baskets of sewing, cards, bird 
cages, dogs, . . . and an occasional able- 

bodied seaman picking his by-your-leavesome 
way through all the human debris, steerage 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 5 

. . . among which were many “assisted emi¬ 

grants” ; all poor, some very, very poor, but by 
no means bad material, for Australia will not 
accept rubbish. Just now all the decks were 
empty and as clean as early morning decks: all 
the passengers were ashore, but Abus had been 
required to bring her small nephew back to the 
ship in a hurry for some reason and, having time 
to burn, I was amusing myself with glimpses 
into her simple history. 

Fortunately for me, Ellicot could not abide 
red-haired women, so he did not envy me Abus, 
who was the only girl on board who made any 
appeal to me. Moreover, he was fully occu¬ 
pied with a little Italian baggage whom he 
picked up after we passed Taranto. After our 
first twenty-four hours together I found myself 
left alone rather more than I had anticipated. 
Ellicot always had a sneaking admiration for 
Abus, in spite of her hair, on account of her in¬ 
tensely capable, practical way with her broth¬ 
er’s children, whom she mothered amazingly 
well. I learned that it was she who managed 
the family exchequer and that her huge brother 
deferred to her judgment in everything. He 
had lost his wife three months ago and was ut¬ 
terly helpless without her. I gathered that 
Abus had always managed the entire household 


6 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


in Maesteg; an eminently practical and capable 
little woman. Apparently it was a job which 
had taken all of her time and energy, as she had 
had to do most of the work of a large household 
consisting of several brothers, not to mention a 
bed-ridden mother who had at last succumbed 
to consumption after seven years’ illness. 

Abus had been married for a little over a year 
to a horrible-looking man whom I later saw 
once only, when he met her on the dock at Syd¬ 
ney. Her husband had preceded her a few 
months in advance to prepare a place for her 
and she was now on her way to rejoin him. All 
of which seemed rather an advantage to me at 
first, because I told myself that nothing serious 
could possibly happen to me in connection with 
a wild female peasant from Wales, but I soon 
began to feel a degree of interest in her out of 
all proportion to my intention;a real pity for her 
as I learned about the life she led with him; and 
a still more real loathing for him. The more 
she extolled his merits, the more I despised him. 

Abus was not exactly pretty but she was a 
great deal more. She was about five feet three, 
very frail and slender, straight, and at first 
glance flat . . . everywhere. Her amaz¬ 

ing hair was piled in coils upon her little head, 
a mass of red gold which always reminded me of 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 7 

the capital of a slender Greek column. It was 
strangely sculpturesque. Her skin was a glit¬ 
tering white and red, and her mouth was a flam¬ 
ing poinsettia scarlet in which I might well have 
been pardoned for not believing. It was a 
flower, the like of which never bloomed on 
mortal woman, dimpled at the corners in a way 
that gave a hint of a smile when in repose. She 
looked painted and artificial, especially in the 
extreme simplicity of her home-made clothing: 
her colouring looked far more out of place than 
if she had been accoutred in the flaming gar¬ 
ments which I thought should have accom¬ 
panied it. Like a jewel in a cardboard box, she 
could not look her best in that environment. 

When I saw her later, robed in fine silk and 
the setting of good quality, the effect was quite 
different. Of course I did not doubt that her 
complexion was unreal, but that was not the 
only mistake I made about her. Abus had 
never used any kind of cosmetic but kitchen soap 
in her life, and, as such, her skin was a gleaming 
miracle. Her eyes were gray and almond- 
shaped, utterly unlike European eyes but not at 
all Mongolian, either: I could not place them at 
all. Her hands, also, I must mention. They 
were the most exquisite I ever saw, modelled 
with infinite delicacy and well cared for in spite 


8 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


of the fact that they were roughened by washing 
clothes and that her forefinger was pricked by 
many a needle. 

Her husband was half Welsh, half Mexican, 
and I believe some sort of engineer. His small 
savage head reminded one of Homo Neander - 
thalensis much more than Homo Sapiens; it was 
sunk in neck muscles which melted into his mas¬ 
sive shoulders without interval. He had un¬ 
usually long arms and Abus said he could twist 
a shilling into a “butterfly” with his fingers. 
She spoke of him with obvious respect, and it 
was very clear to me that she was more than a 
little afraid of him. I accused her of it one day, 
point blank, and asked her why she had married 
him. 

“Oh, I dared not refuse,” was her answer. 
“He would have killed me and he would have 
killed anybody who tried to stop him. He is 
not very tall, but no man alive could stand 
against him . . . and he loves me dearly: 
he is my husband.” 

Almost whenever she spoke of him, she would 
end with that staccato, frightened ejaculation, 
“He is my husband!” as if she were trying to 
reassure herself or get some comfort from it. 
It was a long time before I understood why. 

“But if you didn’t want to marry him, why 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


9 

didn’t you get your brothers to help you; they 
must be big and strong if they are like the 
brother you have on board?” 

She shut her lips, being shy to admit the truth, 
namely, that her brothers were just as afraid of 
him as she was. “He is a good husband to me,” 
she said quickly, “he loves me dearly and would 
not harm me for the world. That is how he is.” 
And she smiled sadly. 

When Abus smiled she ought to have shown 
two rows of the prettiest teeth in the world, but 
she showed them very little, perhaps because she 
tried to hide the fact that she had broken a front 
tooth which had been very badly repaired. 

For some time I bore my curiosity on that 
point with heroic fortitude, but now that we 
were alone, I asked her how it had happened. 

“My husband did it on the first night . , . 

I mean, the day we were married.” 

“Do you mean to say that he struck you?” I 
asked, the blood surging up into my head with 
rage and indignation at the thought. 

“Oh, no,” she replied quickly, “he would 
never raise his hand against me, he loves me 
dearly; he cried bitterly when he saw what he 
had done. It was an accident.” 

“But how on earth . . . ?” 

Abus hung her head like a shy child. She 


IO 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


had no art to refuse to answer a direct question 
when it was put to her, but she was silent now. 
I compelled her by pure will power to tell me. 

“He is a very passionate man ... I 
think,” she said, blushing. “He did it when he 
kissed me. It was not his fault ... he 
. . . he is my husband.” 

There had been no tender love-making for this 
frail, gentle creature, misplanted by nature 
among peasants on bleak Welsh hills. She had 
grown up in some astonishing way, looking as 
delicate as a hairbell but with the strength and 
practical value of a cabbage! She had been 
seen by this grotesque monster with all his rough 
elemental passions and seized, as a prize, taken 
from the bosom of her helpless family, not even 
by conquest, but by fear of his violence. He 
would have killed anybody who tried to stop 
him. It had not pleased him to take her away 
from her family at first: he decided to live with 
them for awhile after her mother died. 

The old woman had been utterly helpless, of 
course; she trembled when she heard Allister 
Dunbagh’s footfall in the house. She had 
begged Abus not to marry him, but he was not a 
man who could take no for an answer about any¬ 
thing. He rode roughshod over all their ob¬ 
jections, and her mother died on the day the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ii 


engagement was announced. “Marriage or 
your life!” he offered as alternatives, and as she 
had seen the effect of thwarting him in little 
matters she gave in to the inevitable, to the 
intense relief of her relations and neighbours 
when he signified his intention of marrying her. 
On the whole, he was a good match, from their 
point of view; he had money saved, was a com¬ 
petent man who could always obtain employ¬ 
ment, and that he could look after her was 
patent to the meanest observer. No man could 
stand against him. That was the unchallenged 
opinion of them all. 

There is no doubt also that he was genuinely 
fond of her. The incident of the broken tooth 
on his marriage night sobered him up consider¬ 
ably: “He cried bitterly when he saw what he 
had done,” and awoke too late to the realization 
that a woman must not be handled in exactly the 
same way as a sack of coals. He had not had 
much experience with women, being as religious 
and strict as he was violent. He was devoted 
to her, in his fashion, and had been most at¬ 
tentive until her child was still-born. For 
months she had been terribly ill and had only 
recently recovered sufficient strength to under¬ 
take the journey when I met her on the Orama. 

She admitted that she had longed to die many 


12 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


times during that time, and I do not doubt she 
meant it. And now, every day was bringing her 
nearer to him, to a new life differing only in 
kind from the old one, far from her childhood 
friends, a life which she could only dimly visu¬ 
alize but which she hoped would not be quite so 
hard as the one she had endured for the last few 
years. She was very hopeful about it, more so 
than I could find it in my heart to be. “It will 
be easier, ah, so much easier, nothing at all 
. . . I shall only have to cook and wash for 

one man. At home there were six with my 
brothers, and before my mother died, seven. 
That was too much. Since, since I was ill I 
have not been able to work so hard, but my hus¬ 
band is very good to me, he loves me dearly, 
and . . 

“And you do not love him, Abus, and never 
loved him, and could never love anybody who 
was not gentle as well as what you are pleased 
to call ‘kind.’ ” 

“And you must not say such things to me, Mr. 
Pyecote, for I shall not be able to speak with you 
in future. I love my husband because he is my 
husband. Do you not see?” 

Abus had the strangest turns of speech, which 
in her mouth seemed to have a special meaning 
other than the actual meaning in common par- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


13 

lance. Her pronunciation of English was 
quite foreign and fascinating. Most of her a's 
were long, and yet they were shortened at times 
into the sound of u in butter. She was more 
fluent in Welsh, of course, which is not one of 
my accomplishments, and I often had as much 
difficulty to understand what she said when it 
was something unexpected as she had to express 
it. She had learned English at school but had 
never had much occasion to use it. 

I saw little enough of Ellicot in these days ex¬ 
cept in the early mornings. He was one of nine 
in my cabin and had the bunk next to mine. I 
had very little satisfaction in his company when 
I did see him; we had very little conversation of 
any interest, for he seemed only anxious to know 
“how far I had got” with my Welsh friend and 
was so eager to discuss the progress of his own 
amour that he did not notice that I had very 
little to tell and was daily less inclined to tell 
him anything. The strange little body of Abus 
intrigued me and I divined gradually that she 
was not really as thin and shapeless as she at first 
appeared. She was infinitely delicately mod¬ 
elled and I could think of nothing in art or na¬ 
ture that resembled her but certain tanagras and 
some little Egyptian figures in a museum at 
Turin. She intrigued me, and though I never 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


H 

thought seriously of loving her—any more, that 
is, than lots of other young women I had loved 
at various times—I did feel compelled to attend 
her. 

When I came on board I felt complacently 
sure that there were not many girls who liked 
me at all that I could not kiss on short notice. 
Besides, Abus, in my conceited estimation, was 
not a “lady,” but she was a lot less easy to kiss 
than many “ladies” I have encountered. She 
would sit and talk to me until 9:30 P.M., when, 
according to the regulations of that moral ship, 
ladies were required to repair to their cabins. 
Of course I realized that a few shillings, wisely 
distributed, would obtain special privileges as 
far as the bo’sun and his satellites were con¬ 
cerned, but when Ellicot asked me “how far I 
had got,” I felt abashed and tongue-tied, I had 
nothing truthful to tell him that he would be¬ 
lieve, so I lied ... a little. 

She was married and was utterly confident 
that no man would dream of making love to her. 
We talked about her village life, of village love, 
and of morals, on a higher plane than was alto¬ 
gether palatable. When I was with her, I 
didn’t want to “make love” to her, either: I 
wanted to make love to her less every day, in 
spite of the fact that her marvellous mouth was 


EGYPTIAN LOVE i S 

a continual temptation to me. It was unattaina¬ 
ble by any but cave-man methods and I could not 
bear to be included, in her mind, in the same 
category with her abominable husband. But 
she was a new experience to me: she drew out of 
me sympathy and philosophical discussion such 
as I had never attempted before with anything 
feminine. It was when I was away from her 
that I had hours of desiring her bitterly. 

In discussion our points of view were so ut¬ 
terly different on most questions and her mind 
so quick and alert to seize and weigh every new 
idea that I offered her, that it became a keen 
delight to tell her things—teach her, in fact. 
It also amused me to exercise my own wits in 
attempting to give her several contrary impres¬ 
sions of my own views and of myself. At times 
I appeared loose and immoral in her eyes, for 
she actually was as simple as those who live in 
the remote country are supposed to be. She was 
about twenty-four at this time and had never 
seen anything outside her own primitive village 
life. She had read almost nothing, having been 
too busy to read anything since she left school at 
the age of fourteen. She had not seen more 
than a dozen magazines in her life and she knew 
the newspaper chiefly as a means of starting the 
kitchen fire. 


i6 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


It is incredible to think of how little she knew 
compared with most people of her class in Eng¬ 
land. I delighted in teasing and confusing her 
mind for the purpose of seeing how far she was 
following me in what I was trying to teach her. 
In this way we discussed all sorts of things 
which I thought would interest her, or that she 
ought to know. I became so interested that I 
forgot to hold her hand and make the usual lit¬ 
tle advances of which I considered myself a past 
master. Once I slid my hand across her knee 
to take her hand . . . and she grasped it 

warmly and frankly, without a shadow of em¬ 
barrassment. “I think,” she said, “you are very 
kind to me because I am a country girl and know 
nothing at all. I mean to try to learn all you 
tell me, because I think you are a good man.” 

My erudition in the arts of love knew no 
subtle counter to that. I felt the dye of shame 
soaking through the coating of pleasure her soft 
little hand spread through me. I did not try 
that again. 

It was altogether a ridiculous situation. 
Everything told me that here was a perfectly 
good little girl to flirt with, who had everything 
to recommend her and no drawbacks at all. She 
was well out of the nursery, married, but not 
happily married. She had told me enough to 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 17 

know that she was bound to him by no better 
claim than fear; besides, she would come to no 
serious harm by such an interlude as I pictured 
to myself so vividly . . . when I was alone. 

By my standards I had every right to play with 
her, but when I was with her my right, I found, 
was radically qualified by the obvious fact that 
she was not for men or for any other man. 

She behaved like a great lady of assured posi¬ 
tion. How can I describe that baffling manner? 
It is not to be expressed in words. She seemed 
to be protected from every advance in some in¬ 
scrutable way. It seemed sometimes almost as 
if she were not alone, as if there were something 
else at times, almost somebody else beside her, 
who was only waiting for a glance of her eye to 
take me by the back of my little neck and fling 
me over the side of the ship into the sea. At 
times this imminence of physical violence was 
extraordinarily strong ... I could feel it 
in the air around her, and I am not the sort of 
person who feels things in the air, as a rule. 
She had the kind of assurance which, I imagine, 
a queen might have; a consciousness that there 
is no superior who can command her above 
her will, though there may be many of superior 
intelligence. 

I felt continually what a perfect little play- 


i8 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


mate she would be if only I could tempt her 
into my lap, but I couldn’t tempt her and I knew 
it. The most humiliating part of it was that she 
didn’t seem to know I was trying: I who was 
so experienced and so irresistible! She was as 
one who is conscious of complete security in pro¬ 
tection, but utterly unconscious of any immedi¬ 
ate use for it. I gave up trying to make love to 
her after a little while but I couldn’t let her 
alone. She fascinated me and it was utterly 
useless for me to tell myself that she was not 
perfect and that I didn’t care. I did care. At 
the slightest sign of light in her eye I could have 
burst into flame, but the sign was never there. 
A sincere regard perhaps, but nothing that could 
be taken as an encouraging beginning for any¬ 
thing more. My mental attainments she did, 
at least, admire, and I decided to make the most 
of them: it was my best chance also. I knew 
she was interested in me and if she succeeded in 
keeping me guessing about the state of her pas¬ 
sions, I could keep her confused about my 
morals and sincerity, and I did. 

Ellicot had gone ashore with his Italian girl at 
Columbo: they were so late in coming back to the 
ship that they were nearly left behind. I tried 
hard to get Abus to accompany me to Mt. La- 
vinia Hotel, some miles out of the city, where I 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 19 

had intended to picnic by myself watching the 
mud turtles and basking in the sunshine. It is the 
best possible setting for a flirtation with the right 
companion, but as I said, Abus wouldn’t go. She 
spent the greater part of the day dragging her 
steps after her brother and his children, up and 
down the hot bazaars. I think she was glad of 
an excuse to get back to the ship early. 

We were looking down into the slimy green 
water between the ship and the dock from the 
already great altitude of the first deck. I could 
feel that Abus was pleased to find me alone on 
board, pleased to be able to talk to me in peace 
without the surging crowds of babies and their 
progenitors almost breathing into our faces as 
they did when the ship was at sea. I had 
shocked her terribly by appearing to have no 
more than a slender regard for the bonds of holy 
matrimony, and she reproved me severely. She 
was very sure of herself on familiar ground like 
that, while she deferred to my judgment on 
everything else. I explained myself by claim¬ 
ing a higher standard of morals than the conven¬ 
tional code, a position she perceived, nebulously, 
as possible since she had herself found the con¬ 
ventional attitude of the village mind at vari¬ 
ance with what she believed was the truth in 
certain matters. 


20 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


She was silent awhile. Then she said, using 
my Christian name for the first time: “Mr. 
Joseph, you see the water down there, how it 
moves. Sometimes as you look it is all white 
and in a moment the dark green of the shadow 
flows in and makes all dark, so dark, it is almost 
black. Yet in a moment comes the light and it 
is all light again.” 

She sighed. “I cannot tell in English just 
what I would say, but . . . like that you 

are!” 



CHAPTER II 


E LLICOT was one of the most fascinating 
men I ever met; utterly pagan at heart but 
with a strong vein of superstition which turned 
suddenly to religious orthodoxy a few years after 
our escapade round the world. I understood 
that he stood strongly for a celibate clergy, but 
he married six months after he was ordained; I 
suppose that was his wife’s doing. He was not 
very serious about it all in the beginning but he 
was already a different man at this time from the 
one I knew. 

I was not in England at the time he was or¬ 
dained but I heard about it from a mutual 
friend. He even forgot when the Bishop’s 
examination was going to be held and realized 
two days in advance of it that he had read none 
of the things which would be required of him. 
Half the first day he devoted to procuring the 
books he ought to have studied for months, the 
second half of the day and the night following 
it he skimmed through the books cutting out, 
with a pair of nail scissors, any remarkable 
sounding sentences which struck his fancy. He 


21 





22 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


compiled about two hundred of these which he 
had reduced to fifty to be typewritten in the 
morning. The next day he devoted to the Bible, 
trusting a good deal to luck on the Hebrew 
which he had studied for a little while in his 
early days at Cambridge. 

His faculty of learning by heart stood him 
in good stead and he learned his “fifty facts/’ as 
he called them, from the text books, Waterfield, 
“On the Eucharist/’ and I don’t know what be¬ 
sides. The tale was so full of Ellicotisms as it 
was told to me that I could see him through 
every move. “I wrote out all the truck I knew 
by heart before every paper,” he said, “and then 
looked through the paper to see how much of it 
I could use up. After each exam I crossed off 
what I had used and retyped the rest which I 
learned before the next paper. I managed to 
use them all up but three in the end, and it cre¬ 
ated an excellent impression.” Not many ap¬ 
plicants for ordination could quote their text 
books almost verbatim as he did, and of course 
the Greek Testament was a toy for him. “It 
was a fraud,” said our mutual friend, “but it was 
the fraud of a first-class man.” 

And that about describes it. I often hunger 
for the Ellicot of the past, with his wit and his 
light touch that could make his marvellous eru- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 23 

dition into a fairyland for children at a mo¬ 
ment’s notice. I see him occasionally in 
London now. He came through the war unin¬ 
jured but he is a changed man whom, for all I 
know about him now, I might never have known 
better than a thousand with whom I have 
been on nodding terms. I feel before him as 
Abraham must have felt before his sons. I feel 
that my sight must be failing and I do not know 
whether to bless or curse. I generally curse, 
though not in his presence: it would grieve him 
deeply now. The arms are the arms of Esau 
but the voice is the voice of Jacob. 

Poor old Ellicot, he’s a lot more Jacob than 
Esau: I liked him better before the reformation. 
I can hardly imagine the fact that he is now a 
full-blown High Church Anglican clergyman 
in a London living, most correct, beloved of his 
flock, eloquent, distinguished, and already ear¬ 
marked for a bishopric. A dreadful end, to my 
thinking, for a man and a great classical scholar 
who could have had anything in Cambridge if 
he had been willing to remain and accept a fel¬ 
lowship. The classics were a passion with him 
and his knowledge of the more obscure and ob¬ 
scene Greek poets was astonishing: Menander 
and Meleager seemed to have written epigrams 
especially for him to quote, and it was said of 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


24 

him that, since Porson’s time, nobody could use 
a great quotation so wittily as the now Reverend 
Robert Aethelred Ellicot, D.D. 

How he found time for so many love affairs 
at Cambridge I have never been able to under¬ 
stand. When I tackled him with it, he laughed 
and said, “Girls are always late, I read for my 
tripos while I’m waiting. And of course, some¬ 
times they don’t come at all. I keep a book in 
my pocket.” He was the despair of the dons at 
Emmanuel. The secret service, which enables 
theauthoritiesto keep an eye on any undergradu¬ 
ate, brought in enough evidence to hang Elli¬ 
cot every week, but his tutor, a deeply religious 
man, must have smothered his conscience against 
violent action because he knew, what everybody 
else in Cambridge knew, that “Ethel” Ellicot 
could be senior classic if he chose and could not 
be outside the first four whatever he did. The 
college needed him, expected to make him a 
Fellow, and his regrettable morals were passed 
over in the interests of scholarship. 

But Ellicot was not all loose: his mind was 
the finest, clean-cutting machine I ever knew. 
His conversation was by no means always about 
women and things “awfully improper”; he was 
a joy to listen to on almost any subject and he 
could quote poetry by the page from any author 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


2S 

he knew at all well. If there is one thing I 
detest, it is to hear poetry quoted in everyday 
conversation by anybody else, but Ellicot knew 
that his own gift made him fascinating to listen 
to. Often, while discussing ordinary matters 
of no importance, a word would remind him of 
its use in some other connection and he would 
begin, in his low, velvet voice, to speak Shelley, 
Keats, or Rossetti as if the words were his own 
thoughts materializing for the first time. And 
after awhile, maliciously, when he saw that his 
music of word and rhythm had touched deep 
emotion in me or another, perhaps against our 
will, he would stop suddenly and say: 

“Sorry, old man, I know you don’t care for 
poetry!” And nothing on God’s earth would 
induce him to continue. 

It is a privilege to have known Ellicot well, 
and if he took much from women, he gave 
abundantly also. To have been able to hold 
him for a while when he was passionately in love 
must have been an experience few women could 
ever forget or regret. “They’re happy while it 
lasts,” he would say, “and I’m happy—and noth¬ 
ing lasts forever. Perhaps it isn’t worse to 
make twenty women divinely happy for a month 
than to make one woman miserable all her 
life!” 


26 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


I feared for the result of him on the Italian 
girl who was madly in love with him from the 
beginning, but he only laughed when I talked to 
him about it. 

“She’s all right,” he observed lightly, “she’s 
no novice, or I should have let well alone. Be¬ 
sides, if you make women fall in love with you, 
you must be able to make them fall out of love 
with you, too. You don’t read your Ovid: he 
tells you all about it in the Remedia Amoris. 
That’s part of the game. There won’t be 
any suicide. Don’t worry, I know what I’m 
doing.” 

“It’ll be beastly unpleasant if there is a row 
on board with all that Italian bunch.” 

“Don’t worry, I tell you, they think she’s got 
a wave of religion. There’s a padre in the sec¬ 
ond class, but he doesn’t really occupy my cabin 
up there. I’ve squared the Purser.” 

It seems odd to think of him now—on the 
high road to a bishopric! 

“But, since you are so solicitous for my wel¬ 
fare, permit me to give you a word of warning 
back. If there is any suicide, it’ll be your girl. 
She’s no type to play with. I don’t know how 
far you have got, but look at the way she handles 
those kids. She’s a woman who can’t play. 
She’s dead in earnest and if she falls in love with 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


27 

you —■'prends garde a toi!’ Most red-reads are 
up and coming, but she, I imagine, would be as 
slow as an ice-wagon. Go easy when you try 
to boil your little kettle over Vesuvius . . . 

she’s no portable, canned-heat contraption. 
And, talking of boiling kettles reminds me of 
tea; and talking of tea reminds me of Queen Tii 
of Egypt: do you happen to know that wonder¬ 
ful head of hers, colossal size, in the British 
Museum? No? She’s rather like it, your 
Abus ... I thought of it the other day 
when I saw you talking to her over by the laun¬ 
dry. Still, you don’t mind my mentioning it, 
do you? Festina lente, you know, make haste 
. . . slowly, is a good motto for any young 

man far from home and mother. Ta toodle, old 
man; Beppina has an appointment with her 
priest at seven-thirty. I’ll just fade away from 
these luxurious surroundings to the second 
class in case I may be of some assistance to her. 
Ta, toodle 1 ” And he was gone. 

I had a good long think about Ellicot’s warn¬ 
ing and decided in my mind that he was right. 
Abus was no toy to play with. Beppina was an 
ordinary Italian peasant from Anticoli, near 
Rome, where she had posed as a model, for the 
artist colony there, since she was a little child. 
She was about seventeen and had a figure like 


28 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


the Capitoline Venus. Small, too, like Abus, 
but she had nothing in her at all but simple pas¬ 
sions. She was going to Queensland with her 
whole family because her uncle had, in a fit of 
peevishness, pushed a knife rather farther into 
a friend of his than he had intended to. So far 
that the man died, and there were indications 
that a prolonged sea voyage would be beneficial 
to the uncle’s health. “Povero disgraziatot” 
said Beppina. There were no surprises in her; 
she could be learnt at one meeting by anybody 
with any perspicacity at all. She had lived 
with an American artist for nearly two years, 
as I afterward discovered, with the complete 
acquiescence of her family. They insisted that 
she should be outwardly correct and make no 
scandal on board, for like most of the emigrants, 
the family was attempting to far’ effetto and ap¬ 
pear to be somewhat more distinguished and ad¬ 
vanced in the social scale than they would have 
dreamed of pretending to be at home. 

They announced that Beppina was engaged to 
the rich signore Inglese, II Signor Ellicotti, 
who was travelling incognito, for reasons they 
were not at liberty to discuss. She was, they 
averred, very religious and unfortunately the 
signore was not as religious as they could wish, 
being in fact a Protestant, after the manner of 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


29 

his compatriots, but he was privileged to have 
daily instruction with Padre Buonamici who 
was travelling in the second class, and there was 
every probability that his love would be the in¬ 
strument of changing his heart with regard to 
religious matters. They expected a conversion 
daily, but such things could not be hurried. It 
was obvious, however, that il signore was serious 
because he had taken a cabin in the second class 
where he retired for many hours in the day for 
meditation, though, as he had a friend in the 
steerage, he would not transfer altogether to 
the second class out of delicacy. 

Beppina’s father was a ready liar when he was 
properly paid for it. The story he invented 
for the neighbours was invulnerable and he 
walked round the space allotted to third-class 
passengers, arm in arm with Ellicott and Bep- 
pina, once every day. It was cheap at 500 lire, 
Ellicot said, and all parties were satisfied. “If 
there should be any unforseen results of the 
engagement,” Beppina’s father had said, it was 
understood that Ellicot should “make proper 
provision for them.” Ellicot offered to pay 
something on account, but the man, struggling 
with his desire for a few extra lire in his hand 
and what he considered right-dealing with a 
man who had treated him well, said it was not 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


30 

necessary between gentlemen. He had the ut¬ 
most confidence in the honour of the signore and 
he knew that the inglese were always to be 
trusted and that his confidence would not be 
abused. Somehow the precious rascal contrived 
to bring into the sordid affair a kind of dignity 
which took the edge off it to some extent. 

But I had my doubts, nevertheless, whether 
the affair would blow over as easily as Ellicot 
thought. 





CHAPTER III 

I N SPITE of the inconveniences and discom¬ 
forts, the experience of travelling in the 
steerage of a great liner is well worth while. I 
would not recommend it to the ultra-squeamish 
and hyper-sensitive, but for young people who 
can cheerfully face the hardships of ordinary 
camping out, the steerage is not so black as it 
is painted on many steamships. I have since dis¬ 
covered that, on other lines, the experience can 
be as horrible as imagination paints it, but on a 
large, up-to-date ship, it is generally more than 
worth while for those whose income precludes 
all chance of travel in the first or second class. 

Men and women are kept severely apart un¬ 
less married, and they meet only on deck. Our 
ship was terribly overcrowded, as there were 
said to be about four hundred souls over the legal 
number for which the vessel was licensed. Every 
available corner of cargo space had been con¬ 
verted into barracks and from six to ten occupied 
the bunks in each compartment. Comparing the 
accommodations on sea with those on land, the 




EGYPTIAN LOVE 


32 

first class corresponds to the first-class hotels, 
the second to the average boarding house or 
small hotel, and the steerage resembles the com¬ 
mon lodging house, Salvation Army shelter, or 
Mills Hotel. The steerage passenger is pre¬ 
supposed to be on the verge of being, not merely 
poor, but down and out. Yet he is paying about 
five dollars a day, for which one can expect de¬ 
cent accommodations on land in any country in 
the world. 

Abus, whose specialty was keeping house and 
providing food for a large family, was horrified 
at the waste which goes on wherever men alone 
are in authority. “Men are not fit to attend to 
the kitchen,” she said. Whole baskets of bread, 
vegetables, and entire joints of meat, not scraps 
and clippings, were thrown overboard daily. 
“Enough good meat to feed our village for a 
week,” said Abus one day when she saw basket 
after basket tipped over the side. Some day a 
vegetarian diet will be tried in the steerage, sav¬ 
ing fifty per cent, of the cost and adding fifty 
per cent, to comfort of the passengers, for no 
one requires the heat-producing foods in such 
quantity when they are compelled by circum¬ 
stances to sit still all day long. Indifferently 
cooked meats are not very palatable anyhow 
and, since what is served once to the table is 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


33 

never used again, a tenth of what is cooked, with 
skilful handling, would be sufficient. 

We used to eat bread, potatoes, and an occa¬ 
sional nibble of other things, but the food, 
though it would pass any censor, was exceed¬ 
ingly unpleasant from pure indifference on the 
part of the cook. Anything would do for the 
steerage. Fortunately Ellicot had brought a 
goodly quantity of supplementary provisions in 
a hamper from Cambridge. “Would it had 
been twice as large,” as Ellicot observed more 
than once; but we replenished it at each port 
with eggs and fruit which, above all, one misses 
from the ship’s dietary. 

On Sundays we had the celebrated plum duff 
of the sea. That, I doubt not, was intended by 
the authorities as a treat, but the cook, on that 
particular voyage, never put any sugar in it and 
sold the infinitesimal quantity he saved thereby 
to add to his income. After the first Sunday 
some of the men kept from breakfast an enve¬ 
lope full of sugar from the sugar bowls provided 
for the breakfast porridge; there were no sugar 
bowls at lunch time. A few shillings wisely 
distributed among the stewards and a present to 
the god of the second-class galley made a con¬ 
siderable difference to our meals when we dis¬ 
covered the right men. Thereafter we had pie 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


34 

and delicacies from the first-class table twice a 
day with injunctions to eat them as secretly as 
possible. 

There were, as I have said, nine in our cabin. 
Two were young plumbers who were travelling 
to see the world systematically. They stayed in 
every country they chose for a year or eighteen 
months: they could always obtain lucrative em¬ 
ployment from the day of their arrival if they 
wanted it. Everywhere there is a demand for 
plumbers, and their master certificates were 
their passports. There was a gardener named 
Pharo, bound for a rich man’s estate near Ade¬ 
laide. There was a huge “bush-whacker” 
named Frank Forsyth who made good money 
clearing bush in the wilder parts of Australia. 
He was so strong that he could carry two bales 
of wire netting at a time (one was more than a 
load for the ordinary man), and his capacity for 
hard work, together with his cheerful disposi¬ 
tion, had made him as popular as a politician in 
his own district. He was a good-natured giant 
with the soul of a child. 

Forsyth was the life of our party: in the eve¬ 
ning, when we were going to bed, he would put 
on his pajamas and lie down between the rows 
of bunks with his head out under the partition 
door which separated us from the passage and 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 35 

pretend to be a watchdog in a kennel. It sounds 
a foolish game, but to see that huge frame, 
arrayed in yellow-striped pajamas, growling 
like a dog and catching the legs of people as 
they went by was something I shall never for¬ 
get myself. Very little will amuse the bored, 
of course, and we were all very bored a good 
deal of the time. 

Forsyth was a man who would certainly have 
rowed for Cambridge and become the idol of 
every sporting club in England if he had hap¬ 
pened to have Eton behind him. He was a gen¬ 
tleman, if ever there was one. As it was he was 
a “bush-whacker” in the backwoods, but he did 
something to educate me by simply being alive. 

Then there were two bakers, the brothers 
Stiff, one of whom was always ill and had a 
mean disposition to boot. He was for ever 
grumbling and so ill-tempered that we were all 
glad his mal-de-mer prevented him from being 
more active than he was. His brother spent a 
good deal of time apologizing for him by telling 
us that it was “ ’is stumick” that caused his irri¬ 
tability. I don’t doubt that had a lot to do with 
it. “Tom’s all right; ’e don’t mean no ’arm. 
It’s jest ’is nature—always was like that—but 
’e’s all right when you know him.” I was never 
so fortunate. 


36 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


Ex-sergeant Forster was another, a sad exam¬ 
ple of over-education in a small space. He 
hated England and the Army, in which he had 
served his time, and was leaving his native land 
for ever to be among people who could “recog¬ 
nize a man when they see him.” If he had been 
m&de a sergeant-major it would perhaps have 
gone far to preserve his loyalty, but it would 
have stirred up mutinies and murders in the 
hearts of his subordinates. 

Somehow I seem to remember another, a non¬ 
descript whose face I might recognize if I saw 
it, but who made no impression on me; I think 
he was an agricultural labourer and that his 
name was McLean. Perhaps he was not in our 
cabin, but that’s the sort of man he was. 

They were a good-natured lot of men on the 
whole, both in our cabin and elsewhere: I can¬ 
not sufficiently admire the psychologist who 
gave us our berths in the first place. He ap¬ 
pointed the passengers under his charge by num¬ 
ber and it was part of his job to put the right 
people together so that there should be no de¬ 
mands for changes afterward. Our cabin was 
certainly well done in the fraction of a second 
he had to devote to our several cases as we passed 
before him. 

Lastly there was Billy. Billy King was not 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


37 

in my cabin at all, but he singled me out for his 
friend from the beginning. Billy was from 
Bournemouth, where he had been a fishmonger 
and poulterer’s assistant. He had a quick wit 
and was born with a desire to serve. I chose 
him for a friend, but he chose me for a master 
and he called me “Sir” until I managed to stop 
him by explaining that it would make my life a 
burden to me if he continued. Billy blushed 
and said he would call me so on shore . . . 

and would expect to get his head snapped off if 
he forgot. He intimated that he knew his place 
and mine and that he would have been a real 
gentleman’s servant if he hadn’t been “reared 
so rough.” “And besides, I got a slight cast in 
my eye, and no real gentleman’d stand that for 
long, so I went in the fish and poultry line.” 
Do what I would, I could not prevent his wait¬ 
ing on me. He called me in the morning and, 
possessing himself of my tea-basket, made me 
early morning tea “like I know gentlemen has 
it.” That had to be stopped, too, but he was 
permitted to acquire merit by making tea for 
me and Abus in the afternoon. I verily believe 
he took a secret delight in pretending to be a 
“real gentleman’s valet.” I tried to talk to him 
on various subjects and to show that I felt some¬ 
thing more than the relation of master and serv- 


38 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

ant with him. I don’t know if he ever believed 
it and though I wrote to him several times at 
intervals after we parted, he never answered. 

Billy used to have tea with us, of course, and 
afterward he washed the tea things and faded to 
a respectful distance while I talked to Abus. 
He could not command privacy for me on the 
public deck, but he did his best to preserve a cir¬ 
cle of comparative calm around the part we had 
chosen. At times when the crowd closed in on 
us, like syrup round an isolated berry on a plate, 
Billy would whisper confidentially where he 
thought we should be more comfortable and 
offer to carry our chairs if we wished to move. 
We never joined the hilarious circle of lovers 
who occupied the seats “up at the blunt end,” as 
they called the stern of the vessel. Abus was 
correct in the extreme and gave the tongues of 
gossip no chance to wag. 

She had been telling me one day of her life in 
Wales and how she had hoped to be able to study 
music and how she actually had learned in about 
a month to play the organ well enough to offi¬ 
ciate in the village church. When she was 
about nineteen, she was obliged to give that up 
because her religious convictions changed from 
the Christianity of the neighbourhood to some¬ 
thing else for which her limited vocabulary had 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 39 

no name. She refused to believe in eternal pun¬ 
ishment. “They say at home that I am mad,” 
said she, “because I think that I have lived be¬ 
fore, but that is not so. I am not mad so that I 
cannot cook and wash and clean house and man¬ 
age all the money, but I do not believe in 
Heaven or Hell. How should I be able to stay 
in their Church, for they believe that? I know 
that I am not mad. Perhaps you think so, too; 
but I know it is true I have lived before. I 
think it was in Egypt that I lived. I think so 
because I remember. But you are laughing at 
me and you pretend, to see how foolish you can 
make me talk. Perhaps also you do not under¬ 
stand my English: I cannot speak English very 
properly because I speak always Welsh in my 
home. Also, I do not see many others, only my 
family and my husband, because I work so hard. 
There is always so much to do and I do it nearly 
all myself. Are you laughing at me? Truly 
tell me?” 

I told her of course that I was not laughing 
'at her at all and I asked what she had heard or 
read about Egypt. 

“Nothing. I have not much time to read. 
You see, there is so much to do, and besides, in 
my village in Wales, it is among the mountains; 
there is nothing to read. And if I would read 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


40 

I should be leaving other things—things which 
must be done. I should not know where to get 
the books and I have no time at home. I should 
like to read something . . . oh, it is all 

foolishness; I have never seen anything but only 
one photograph of the Pyramids which a sailor 
brought to my home when I was a child. But 
somehow I knew them although they were so 
broken and spoiled. It is not like that I re¬ 
member them; they should be smooth and white 
. . . like ... I think like marble. But 

how could they be marble, for they are very big 
and there is not so much marble in the world, is 
there? 

“I thought to see something in the museum at 
Cardiff, on my way to London, but I think it is 
not a very good museum. There was nothing 
much to be seen, only pieces of coal, such as we 
burn in the stove, and many pieces of stone. 
Strange, is it not, there is not much in the 
museum at Cardiff? And Cardiff is a large 
town, the largest town I have ever seen.” 

“London is larger than Cardiff,” I observed. 

“Yes, I know, and you are laughing at me; 
but I was only one day at London, and the next 
day, in the morning, we came to the ship. I 
hoped to go to the British Museum to see if 
there was anything from Egypt there, but I did 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


4 i 

not know how to go. I was frightened in Lon¬ 
don and I stayed all the day in the lodgings, for 
my brother was very busy . . . but I be¬ 

lieve there are wonderful things in the world to 
see. I wanted to see pictures painted all by 
hand and to hear music. Then there are the 
palaces that I know, but they are not real. I 
think they are somewhere in the world, though. 
If I shall ever see them, I would know. But it 
is foolishness: it is not possible. How can you 
believe I have lived before!” 

“Perhaps I don’t believe it,” I replied, “but 
many people, in different countries all over the 
world, do believe that we have all lived before 
and many, many times. I am not sure myself 
whether I believe it or not. Sometimes I think 
I can remember things myself, but I cannot re¬ 
member them for more than a few moments. 
For example, there is one ever-recurring dream 
I have in which I seem to see two men walking 
before me with flails, such as you still use in 
Wales to thresh small quantities of corn, and 
they flog people who do not get out of my way, 
but of course I do not believe they ever 
did. . . ” 

“But they did!” 

“What?” I asked, sharply. 

“I did not say anything.” 


42 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


I could have sworn Abus said it, and I will 
still swear that those words were said. Could 
she have said them without knowing it? We 
were not alone on the crowded deck and very 
likely I heard the common phrase out of some¬ 
body else’s conversation, but its apposite answer 
to my sentence upset the thread of my thought 
for a moment or two. Then I asked her if she 
had ever heard of the doctrine of reincarnation. 

Her look of blank amaze showed plainly that 
she had not. She had not been hearing me for 
several moments. She had a look, almost of 
fear, in her face, and her hand reached out for 
mine in the twilight for support and confidence 
and assurance. I held it, but I knew very well 
it was not an advance. 

“There are others who believe they have lived 
another life, many other lives, in another place, 
at a different time, perhaps a hundred, a thou¬ 
sand years ago?” she asked, wistfully. “Then 
perhaps it is true; oh, I know it is true. And 
you are not making a mock of me? If I thought 
that I could kill you or die ... I should 
die of shame. Have your fun . . . but 

not about that, Joseph. Tell me, truly?” 

“Abus,” I said gently, “I would not dream of 
making mock of you. It is true that people of 
some religions believe most firmly in reincarna- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


43 

tion, which means, ‘to be in flesh again/ to be in 
the body again, that is. It is the keynote of 
what is believed throughout India, for example. 
There are three hundred millions of people in 
India who would be astonished to hear that any¬ 
body really doubted it. I think I believe it 
myself, because of some day-dreams which I 
used to have when I was a child. Certainly 
there are people in England who believe it. But 
tell me one thing more. Who told you my 
name, for Mr. Ellicot always calls me James 
and nobody else on board knows my Christian 
name? I generally call him James, too, though 
his name is Aethelred. Most people call him 
Ethel. I remember that you called me Mr. 
Joseph once. What made you call me that?” 

“I don’t know,” she replied vaguely. “You 
look like him. To me you are Joseph.” 

I didn’t think she knew what she was saying, 
so I did not press the question. She was think¬ 
ing deeply, torn by emotions that she was trying 
to master. It had never occurred to her that 
there could be anybody else with her idea of the 
recurrence of life, and the realization that she 
was not alone in it seemed to make her memories 
more concrete, more real, more important to 
herself. 

“My family say I must not think of these 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


44 

things, and I try not to, but when he comes 
. . . and looks down at me ... so 

. . . into me . . . into my very heart, 

I cannot help it!” 

The evening bell, which announced the time 
for ladies to retire, rang loudly for several min¬ 
utes but Abus did not move. She sat, gazing 
into space, with her chin upon one hand while 
the other lay forgotten in mine. It did not feel 
like a hand at all; it was dead, like a glove full 
of sand. Presently a deck hand with a broom 
in his hand came up and said: “Very sorry, Sir 
. . . Bo’sun’s orders . . . Quartermas¬ 

ter’ll be along in a few minutes.” I pressed a 
few shillings into his hand, at which he gaped 
in astonishment. Tips are not common on the 
steerage deck and a few shillings in the abyss 
will accomplish what a golden sovereign will do 
in the first class upstairs among the gods. 

“I see how ’tis, Sir,” he observed, “but 
. . . if you was to go up to the second class 

presently . . . bow end ... I think 

as ’ow I could square the steward. ’E’s a friend 
of mine, and you could stay there as long as you 
was wishful to stay, but you can’t stay just ’ere 
nohow, because of the light.” And he vanished 
suddenly. I put my arm round Abus and made 
her get up. She did not resent my arm and for 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


45 

a moment I had a sense of triumph. A moment, 
I say, for a moment later I saw by her expres¬ 
sion that she was utterly unaware of my pres¬ 
ence. She walked like one in a dream and 
leaned heavily upon me as we negotiated the 
companionway to the second-class deck. I 
found two chairs placed in a shadow just where 
the deckman had recommended me to go, and 
the wraith of a steward flitted round the corner 
as we sat down. 

I have had the honour of sitting in the moon¬ 
light with a good many young women in my 
time, holding hands . . . and so forth, but 

I was very much aware that this was a new ex¬ 
perience. Her little hand seemed to change: 
it was a real hand again, throbbing, sometimes 
cool and sometimes warm. It seemed to beat a 
rhythm of this change which, I doubt not, was 
due to my own excited imagination. I record 
what seemed to be, for I do not know what actu¬ 
ally was in all that time. We were utterly alone 
and yet not alone. The darkness seemed alive 
with shapes which I almost saw. There seemed 
to be several people standing near her, like serv¬ 
ants, I thought . . . but when I looked 

straight at what I thought I saw out of the cor¬ 
ner of my eye, the shape did not vanish but 
simply wasn’t there. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


46 

Abus was in a sort of a trance from which she 
was slowly recovering. I could have lifted her 
on to my lap so easily . . . but I did not 

dare to; that’s the plain fact. In imagination I 
could feel her arms round my neck and her 
breath on my face ... I was thrilled to 
the bone. Memories of the very remote past 
seemed to press themselves upon me. “I must 
get away,” I kept saying to myself, “I must get 
away before somebody comes. This is not rea¬ 
sonable or natural. This is not like any¬ 
thing that ever happened before. This means 
death and nothing else . . . death. . . . 

Death!” 

Suddenly Abus sat up and withdrew her hand. 
“He will not come now,” she said. Her voice 
broke the spell that was upon me and I became 
aware that my dream and fear of death was in 
some way connected with her, for it ceased 
abruptly, as if cut by a knife, when she with¬ 
drew her hand from mine. 

The air was empty; there was no sound but 
the rhythm of the engines and the faint wash of 
the water along the side. The mysterious won¬ 
der of the stars, including the disappointing 
Southern Cross, was upon everything. The 
moon swayed slightly in the sky, the warmth of 
the dark, and the deep joy which the tropical 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


47 

night always brings to me, came like a smile 
and pervaded all my being as if it was some¬ 
thing of my own. It would be hard to find any 
one who looked more obviously English than I 
do, but I am never at home in England as I am 
when my feet are upon sand and there are palm 
trees and bees in the sun-bright air. One of my 
earliest recollections, a dream which I have al¬ 
ways thought was connected with a past life, was 
of being in a deep hole, with a light at the top, 
in which I sat with a bunch of fresh dates in my 
lap. And I sucked my fingers continually with¬ 
out making any headway at all. 

“He will not come now,” said Abus. 

“Who is He?” 

“It is Theoboama,” she said seriously. “When 
he comes, how shall I refuse to see him? I do 
not ask him to come, I do not ask to see him; 
yet he comes and looks through me with his 
eyes. I have never seen eyes like Theoboama’s. 
They are so large and still. Very serious are 
his eyes. I have never seen him smile in all the 
many times I have seen him, and he is coming 
since more than ten years now.” 

“Tell me about him.” 

“I was thirteen, and I was sweeping the kitch¬ 
en. I was so tired after school that I sat 
down to rest for a moment. And I become 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


48 

stiff all over and my arms feel as if they are tied 
to my bodie. And then he comes and looks at 
me. Theoboama is tall, very tall. His fore¬ 
head slopes back. I think he is in a very good 
position of life, not like me now: I think he is 
very proud. He is very proud and his eyes I 
can see always. But I do not see him very 
often; I have not seen him at all on the boat. 
He came to me now, but I did not see him, only 
I know he was there. I think the people keep 
him away; he comes always when I am in trou¬ 
ble to help me, and if I go to do something 
wrong he is looking at me and I cannot do it.” 

“What does he look like?” 

“He is dressed in folds, more like a dress it 
is, but not like a woman’s. He is often dressed 
in red, not like wine, but like the stain of wine. 
And there is gold ornaments upon him and upon 
his arms. Some is like embroidery, with gold 
in patterns, but I do not think it would be very 
easy to do embroidery like Theoboama’s. It is 
not possible. . . . Sometimes he has his 

head bound close also with the same cloth. I 
think it must be some kind of silk or fine linen, 
it is so beautiful. And there is sometimes a 
wide band of gold round his forehead, like a 
crown—no, I cannot explain what it is. It is 
not like the crown of the King of England, it is 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


49 

more simple, though there is patterns on it, and 
it is narrow behind where it is tied on. Chains 
of gold hang down nearly to his shoulders like a 
fringe. He has ear-rings, too, but not like mine. 
His are dull gold and rough like they was made 
of fine grains of sand. Mine are long and blue, 
always blue, like the colour of the top of a wave 
before it becomes green. A deep bright blue, 
like the sky in the evening near the moon.” The 
ear-rings she was wearing were made of half 
a bead of red coral set in gold, which does not 
look quite real. 

“I think Theoboama must be in a very good 
situation of life; I think I should be afraid if 
he was to be English and of now . . .” 

“Do you love Theoboama?” I asked. 

She started violently, and in the moonlight, 
which revealed her face as she sat up stiffly, I 
saw that her face was distracted with fear and 
she said quickly: “I love my husband, he is very 
good and he loves me. He is the best of hus¬ 
bands, very true, as steel . . . very kind 

and tender is my husband.” 

For a moment she was silent. Then she con¬ 
tinued: “I used to say that I would not ever get 
married until . . . but I had to marry my 

husband. I could not help it. He is very pas¬ 
sionate,” 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


50 

“But you love Theoboama.” 

She did not answer. 

“I know for five minutes before when he 
comes to me, and then I wash my hands and face 
and brush my hair and sit down and wait with 
my hands together, quite still. Sometimes 
Theoboama puts his arms around me,” she said 
in an awed whisper. 

“And are you afraid?” 

“No. ... I was afraid at first . . . 

I was only thirteen: that is why I asked my 
parents about him. But now, oh, no, I am de¬ 
lighted.” 

“You asked your parents about him, and what 
did they say?” 

“Yes, at first, of course, when he came right 
into the kitchen where I was sweeping. I said: 
‘Who is that strange man, so tall, with the crown 
of gold on his head and the red dress?’ It 
looked so strange to me, for I had never seen a 
man dressed like that before. But they would 
not tell me, so they said: ‘Are you mad, child? 
No such person has come here. You have been 
dreaming instead of doing your work.’ That 
was not true—I had swept all clean like always 
and I was very much ashamed and never spoke 
to them again about him, because they could not 
see him. Theoboama said I should speak with 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


Si 

them no more about him. Once he kissed me. 
. . . I was about sixteen then and I think he 

would kiss me now. But then I feel so ashamed 
because I am married. I thought that when I 
got married he would not come no more . . . 

that is why I tried not to be married . . . 

yet it is like a great joy, you know, for I remem¬ 
ber many things that I have not seen, and I re¬ 
member that other life, sometimes for hours 
afterward. I think I am not a servant . . . 

I cannot understand . . . because I feel so 

respectful toward Theoboama, and he treats me 
just as respectful, almost as if I was his superior, 
which is nonsense. And then things come into 
my mind which I cannot understand at all, but 
many familiar things also like brooms and 
saucepans and things I use, but not like those 
things I use now at all. I think sometimes I 
must have been a lady and not a simple country 
girl.” 

“They would say in the East that it is proba¬ 
ble you did somebody an injury who was per¬ 
haps your servant, and you are compelled to be 
in a lower position as a punishment.” 

Her eyes filled with tears. “Joseph, that is 
just what I did! How could you possibly know 
that in the world! Even myself, I did not quite 
know it. Only Theoboama knows, and that he 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


S2 

will not tell me. I do not know anything about 
it except that it was a servant, and I did some 
wrong to him; I was so ashamed when Theo- 
boama told me I had done so! Oh, I should not 
talk to you at all about this ... it is fool¬ 
ish .. . it is not possible, so you will think 

me mad. I am afraid so, and yet I think you 
will not, for, as I held your hand I began to re¬ 
member things as I do when Theoboama comes. 
Indeed he came, too, but I could not see him. I 
heard him going away: his shoes make a sound 
that I cannot mistake.” 

“What kind of shoes has he?” I asked, for 
want of something better to say. It was not at 
all what I wanted to say, but the thoughts flowed 
through me so fast that every question I asked 
was like something caught at random from a 
swift-flowing tide. 

“I do not often see his feet,” said Abus. “I 
had a funny kind of shoe myself, with pieces be¬ 
tween my toes, all of gold. Sometimes his feet 
are bound up with cloth all over and sometimes 
he has shoes like mine. Sometimes there are 
separate places in his shoes for each toe, and the 
large toe is much longer than the others, pointed 
. . . each has a cap of gold. Sometimes it 

seems his feet are not quite on the ground at all. 
I cannot see his feet very often; I think they 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


S3 

are covered by his dress and I can see only his 
eyes when he is near. But do not tell any of 
these people. I should not have told you any¬ 
thing, but I have never met any one before who 
ever believed it was possible we have lived be¬ 
fore. And perhaps you can remember some¬ 
thing about him, or about that other . . . 

oh, I must be mad in truth, for it seems you 
have been there, too, but have forgotten, like me. 
Do not tell anybody. They will laugh at me; 
they will think me mad, but I know I am not 
mad. Help me to remember , . . some¬ 

thing ... it is so near . . . can’t 
you? I can see a boy a little older than I am. 
He is so beautiful! I love him, why shall I 
deny it! He knows it, too, for I held out my 
arms to him and I know he loves me again but 
he . . . What is this that is happening to 

me? I was never like this before! Mr. Pye- 
cote, if you can’t tell me who he is, leave me 
alone. I must know. Fetch him back to me 
instantly ... I will have it so, like a dog 
. . . leave me alone. Perhaps Theoboama 

will come to me ... he always comes 
when I need help, and I need it now. Theo¬ 
boama, if you desert me, how shall I ever be able 
to find him! Theoboama, Theoboama . . .” 
Her voice died away into a whisper. 


54 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


I was startled by the passion in her voice, but 
I was completely helpless. The affair seemed 
to get more complicated instead of simpler. I 
reviewed the situation hurriedly. Baldly, I had 
been doing my best to flirt with a young peasant 
woman from the country. She would have 
nothing to do with me . . . like that any¬ 

how, because she was married to a husband of 
whom she was terrified. Then, I realized that 
that is not the real reason, because she has a 
lover in a sort of Egyptian familiar, solid enough 
to kiss her but tenuous enough to float out of a 
kitchen window, “passing away by that kind of 
passing away which leaves nothing whatever re¬ 
maining.” And then to top off with, she in¬ 
vokes both me and him to help her find a lovely 
boy, whose neck I could wring with pleasure 
unspeakable at this moment. ... I stepped 
back into the deepest part of the shadow about 
fifteen feet away. 

She sat bolt upright, with her elbows close 
to her body, motionless and staring into the 
night, looking more like an Egyptian statue than 
ever before. Suddenly Abus rose, like one who 
stands because of the presence of a superior. 
She gazed straight before her with an expres¬ 
sion of wrapt adoration. It was so beautiful 
and dignified that I forgot to be jealous and 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 5S 

searched the empty dark before us to find what 
she, apparently, was seeing. I saw . . . 

no, it’s absurd, I saw nothing: there was no 
shape of any kind, but I did see something 
which I can only describe as movement. The 
darkness seemed to move toward a centre and 
that centre was changed with power of some 
kind, something strong and very vital. I saw 
nothing that could be described in terms of any¬ 
thing but emotion, but my eyes did not wander 
in the obscurity looking for some object to focus 
upon. I could not have looked away from that 
point to a light, to the eyes of a wild beast, or 
the shape of a man. 

My attention was concentrated with intense 
and lively interest upon a particular part of 
space in which there was nothing that was not 
equally everywhere else. I knew, however, that 
whatever it was, it was the same thing for which 
Abus had been waiting, for as soon as I had 
absolutely located the exact centre of my atten¬ 
tion, Abus walked slowly forward as if humbly 
greeting someone. The movement in the dark¬ 
ness came towards her and almost enveloped her 
for a moment. For an instant I think I did lose 
sight of her, and when I saw her again dis¬ 
tinctly, her head hung down and her arms were 
raised in the position of a woman who, held in 


EGYPTIAN LOVE' 


56 

her lover’s arms, lays her head contentedly on 
his shoulder, the shoulder of a tall man. She 
remained in that posture for several minutes. 

The sense of intimacy, the intense privacy 
which I felt in the air, compelled me to look 
away. I felt that I was eavesdropping and that 
Abus and her familiar were entitled to the dark¬ 
ness of the night undisturbed. If I could have 
passed away silently without going near them, I 
would, but at my back was a stack of deck chairs 
which the steward had piled in preparation for 
the morrow’s deck-washing. I could hardly 
pass Abus and her familiar without going 
through them. 

I felt that Abus had become a thing of faery 
and without substance. I waited and held my 
breath. Presently Abus released him with re¬ 
gret, following with her eyes something which 
to me was invisible. She had forgotten my ex¬ 
istence entirely. Glancing about her, she 
realized that she was on the second-class deck, 
where she had no business to be. She peered 
around her nervously but without seeing me, and 
then turned slowly and walked quickly away 
in the direction of the companionway and down 
the steps. I ran toward it and saw that she was 
walking quickly in the direction of the women’s 
cabin in the steerage. 


mm 




CHAPTER iy 

I DID not sleep well that night. Vague and 
absurd memories, feeble echoes of what 
Abus had been telling me so convincingly dur¬ 
ing the day, flitted through my brain like the 
bubbles of gas in an open bottle of soda water. It 
seemed to me that every thought which came to 
the surface would explain something and yet 
each burst on the surface of my mind into blank 
nothingness. 

I cannot tell what I thought during the hours 
I lay awake. I suppose I dozed aijd dreamed 
awake alternately. I thought a great deal about 
my brothers, particularly one whose name be¬ 
gan with G and was on the tip of my tongue for 
hours. ... I never got it. I have no 
brothers, nor sisters either for that matter, but 
in my dream I seemed to have dozens of them, 
most of whom were much older than I, nearly 
grown up while I was about ten or twelve. I 
was in a fever of passion for Abus such as I had 
never felt in her presence for hours on end. I 
had visions of Persians and Egyptians in end- 
57 




EGYPTIAN LOVE 


58 

less procession, I seemed to see gold and silver 
vessels of odd shapes and the sound of a thrash¬ 
ing machine, and a great granary, too, and rats, 
which my terrier ran away from, whimpering. 
It was quite horrible to see old Spotto afraid of 
a rat! I was tormented by the smell of old 
wheat, a hot fermenting odour that made my 
head swim. My tongue was dry and there 
seemed to be neither air nor moisture in the 
cabin, though I was lucky in having my bunk 
next to a porthole. 

When I was awake I hung my head out of it 
by the hour, but the same feeling of being 
parched obsessed me. I suppose it was because 
we were entering the Red Sea at the time; every¬ 
body complained bitterly of the heat. All sorts 
of strange, unimportant obsessions seemed to 
remain over from my dreams when I awakened. 
The sound of the water along the side of the 
ship sounded to me like the swish of grain upon 
an inclined plane, and the noise of the men 
washing the decks in the early morning sounded 
like the work of millers, for no reason upon 
earth. I kept repeating to myself, “the sound 
of the grinders is low, and the mourners go 
about the streets.” I was thankful I had not 
taken my mattress up on deck, as some of the 
others had done, for to have been disturbed when 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


59 

I was feeling as I did that morning would have 
put me in danger of the gallows. 

I suppose I slept more than I thought, but my 
dreams were troubled even when I turned over 
for my last morning sleep. It was so vivid 
that I remember it now as if it had just hap¬ 
pened to me. I dreamed I was playing cards 
with my grandmother for enormous stakes; faro, 
the game was. I wanted to win more than any¬ 
thing I ever wanted before in life. Faro, be¬ 
ing a pure gambling game, does not interest me 
when I am awake and I have only an indistinct 
idea now how it is played. My poor old grand¬ 
mother, who never permitted a game of cards 
in her house in her life, appeared to be an in¬ 
veterate gambler. I wanted to win, but I knew 
that I was absolutely certain to lose. Abus 
leaned over me as I played at one moment and 
whispered in my ear: “Play to your last chip if 
you want the reward,” and she laughed. I 
looked up into her eyes and knew what she 
meant, but I tore myself away from the table 
and ran for my life, shrieking, “I daren’t, . . . 
I daren’t ... it means death!” 

Billy King came at seven to see if I wanted 
anything, and I beckoned him in. “Billy,” I 
whispered, “if you could get hold of a cup of 
tea this morning, with a stick in it if possible, 


60 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

I’ll come outside to drink it. I have had a 
rotten bad night.” 

“I slep’ on deck; you better let me take your 
mattress up to-morrow. It ain’t healthy sleep¬ 
ing down here in this heat nohow.” 

Beloved Billy, he got the tea in five minutes 
and announced its presence by the old cockney 
whistle, very softly, outside the door, which 
means “ ’Alf a pint o’ mild and bitters . . 

It meant volumes to me that morning. That 
helped, but I was not myself till breakfast was 
over. 

Ellicot slept the sleep of the just, lying on his 
back with his mouth open. In his hand was a 
volume of Aeschylus, still open, with which he 
had read himself to sleep. He was blithe and 
garrulous when he woke up and without a care 
in the world. 

“Shike orf dull sloth an’ joyful rise-a 
To pay the morning sacrifise-a,” 

he carolled, imitating a devotional cockney in 
a proper morning spirit. 

“James,” he said, sententiously, “I am ex¬ 
ceedingly well this morning, and I want to have 
a long talk with you upon serious subjects, such 
as the Pyramids . . . and their influence on 
the present era.” 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


61 


“James, I thank you, and once again I thank 
you,” I replied, trying hard to enter into his 
happy mood, which was far from my feeling 
and inclination of the moment. 

“James,” he continued, holding up the book, 
“this blighter iEschylus is worthy of more at¬ 
tention than is usually bestowed on him. But 
that blighter Freud is all wrong concerning the 
CEdipus complex and I shall write a large tome 
in the near future which will effectually dis¬ 
pose of him. Something Bepp said last night— 
or did I say it?—I dare say I did, but it gave me 
an idea.” 

“I had no idea that you discussed Aischylus 
with Bepp!” 

“To tell you the truth, James, I do not. She 
has talent, much talent: more talent than I have 
ever encountered before ... in certain di¬ 
rections, but, without disclosing a lady’s secret, 
I am in a position to tell you that her talent does 
not include iEschylus.” 

All through breakfast Ellicot babbled along 
in this vein. We spent the morning together 
and he descanted at length upon the reaction of 
the sexes upon one another and the meaning 
and value of inspiration. With regard to Bep- 
pina he opined that he should be obliged to 
buy her and keep her in a hutch somewhere, 


62 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


because, though her conversation “drooled along 
about nothing, hour after hour and day after 
day,” she stimulated him in body and soul. 
“She is the finest lubricant for the mind, and I 
think she would not freeze at any altitude.” 

“James, that girl is like a drug. She has no 
soul; she is an animal, an animal of the finest 
quality and she fits me like a hat. If animal 
life could persist in a bottle, she ought to be 
put in a bottle and labelled with a skull and 
crossed bones. I know I oughtn’t to take her. 
If she were in a bottle I could resist her better. 
If she smelt of a chemist’s shop, I could recog¬ 
nize in her the dangerous habit, but, James, she 
does not smell of the chemist’s shop. Not at 
all! 

“But she is like the little pipe or the hypo¬ 
dermic needle, just the same. One jab of her 
under my skin and my blood turns to warm milk, 
all over, and if I could write, write down the 
dream then and there, I should enrich the 
world’s literature with masterpieces of the same 
calibre as that blighter iEschylus. 

“James, she is utterly worthless and at the 
same time has that, 

. . most precious in men’s eyes,’ 
and what am I going to do about it? 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 63 

“I shall abandon her, I suppose, after ‘be¬ 
traying’ her and continuing the ‘ruin’ which was 
begun by that artist chap (I bet he’s peevish at 
her departure) somewhere around Anticoli, but 
let me tell you that it will be an act of great 
fortitude and self-denial on my part. It will 
be as difficult as giving up morphine. Per¬ 
haps every type of woman means that much for 
some type of man. I doubt very much if we 
are so wise as the Mohammedans who lock them 
all up. Beppina ought certainly not to be at 
large, but I’m glad she is, too. 

“It must be terrible to be virtuous: the prob¬ 
lems of life would be so enormously more diffi¬ 
cult. What, for instance, does a pure man do 
when he feels inspired to produce his best by a 
woman whom his mind tells him is loose and 
utterly unworthy to be the mother of babes? 
What does he do when sorely tempted to take 
what is freely offered in perfect security by a 
widow woman he would have married if she had 
not arrived in his life too late, the alternative 
being her undying hatred? I don’t mean, what 
ought he to do, I mean what does he? In India 
they say, ‘Refuse not a woman when she cometh 
to you in her need.’ In Europe we say, ‘Re¬ 
fuse all women except the one you are tired of.’ 
A noble precept since the hair shirt has fallen 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


64 

into desuetude. And how often she is just as 
bored with you! It’s a rum life! 

“And what does the aforesaid man of perfect 
probity and rectitude when he, being a handsome 
young secretary, encounters the lovely young 
wife of a rich and powerful old man to whom 
she was married by her avaricious parents be¬ 
fore she had been able to form a mature judg¬ 
ment of the married state, and she signifies her 
assent in the usual manner and so forth, per¬ 
haps loving in him for the first time in her life 
the physical and spiritual counterpart we all 
hope to find some day?” 

“I can tell you that,” I replied. “He runs 
away, if he’s got any sense!” 

“James, well art thou named Joseph. That 
is what your precious namesake did in the mat¬ 
ter of the Lady Potiphar. In my opinion he 
was a plain, uncoloured, cowardly worm: and 
he probably missed the time of his life.” 

“Well, she was old, and fat, and ugly, James. 
I don’t see that he missed so much.” 

“She was none of those things, James. She 
was young and sweet and fifteen. She had eyes 
like black sloes from Persia, and lashes like the 
first shadows of night. Her mouth was like a 
red plum and the pale gold of her skin melted 
into the sable fall of her hair. She was gracious 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 65 

and perfect and ill-married, so much so that 
when she saw a man, though he was only a slave, 
meet to be her complete lover, who satisfied her 
entirely and made the blood within her leap to 
meet him, her passion overcame her long-taught 
modesty and she cried out for him and lost her 
head, poor child. Shame and terror combined 
to make her commit the abominable crime of 
accusing him afterward of something he hadn’t 
the pluck to do, but she paid in full, with the 
agony of a lifetime’s shame and devotion. Who 
knows if such a sin is expiated now, or can ever 
be expiated! You don’t read poetry, do you? 
And you might easily never have read my friend 
Mullana Abdulkahman Jami; he is a little 
tedious at times. I must tell you about Zuleikha 
same day, for the Bible, fortunately, does not 
preserve the only account of the incident—and 
I prefer the others.” 

“Tell me about it now. I am particularly 
anxious to hear the other version,” I said. 

“The process of the mummification of the 
human body is one which has always exercised 
a peculiar fascination for me. In ancient times, 
in the early period of Egypt, the process was 
long and complicated, but it became abbreviated 
for the poor until at last it was little more than 
injecting a certain amount of creosote. A sim- 


66 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ilar process applied to pigs in our day is that 
which makes the execrable bacon we had at 
breakfast. This brings me to the point I want 
to make. Did the Egyptian slave make a good 
quality ham or not?” 

In that mood there was nothing further to be 
done with Ellicot. He could be utterly per¬ 
verse and unreasonable. He was a closed book 
for anything serious as soon as he started off in 
that vein. He was like an encyclopaedia on his 
own subjects, bound between the covers of a 
cheap joke book. I left him in disgust. Pres¬ 
ently I found Abus, who tried to avoid me, but 
I cut off her retreat to the women’s cabin and 
made her face me. She blushed scarlet when I 
came toward her and begged me not to remem¬ 
ber any of the foolishness she had talked the 
night before. 

“It is foolishness and not true, of course: 
promise me you will forget it and tell no¬ 
body. I must be mad to tell you such a non¬ 
sense!” 

The bell for midday dinner made promises 
unnecessary at the moment and in the afternoon 
we were diverted by a funeral. An elderly 
man, in whom nobody took any interest because 
he was ill-tempered and quarrelsome, had been 
taken ill very suddenly on the previous evening 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 67 

and removed at once to the hospital. Nobody 
seemed to know what had been the matter with 
him and nobody cared. The funeral took place 
at two o’clock. For one awe-inspiring moment 
he occupied the silent, undivided attention of 
nine hundred of his fellow men. His pall was 
the flag of his country. The clergyman read a 
brief service, as brief as possible, and the body 
was weighted and committed to the waters while 
the heart of the great ship stood still for one mo¬ 
ment. The waters closed over that poor bundle, 
leaving no trace. 

A burial at sea is an impressive occasion which 
I should think would touch every heart. One 
faint splash in the fathomless sea among so 
many myriads of similar sounds seems to awaken 
in everybody the dream of the day when that 
moment will come to him also. And after it, 
what have Fate and Eternity in store for the 
hungry soul? Rebirth or extinction? Reward 
or Punishment? What? 

“Well,” said my immediate neighbour, a red¬ 
faced man with freckles on his nose, “that’s the 
end of ol’ Bert! Ugly old boy ’e was and dis- 
agrerble? That’s right. ’E ain’t no loss. ’E 
was going to see ’is son in Orstrilia and plant 
’isself on ’im ’cos none o’ the family wanted ’im 
in England. Won’t ’e be sorry, I don’t think! 


68 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

When’s the bar open? My, but ol’ Bert was 
disagrerble!” 

“Guess the sharks has got him now!” put in 
another, hopefully, a young man with many 
blackheads on his forehead. 

“Ain’t no sharks here, ’cos why, we’d see ’em 
if so. They has their tail out o’ water!” 

“Not when they’s swimming deep down, they 
don’t, and it ain’t their tail, it’s their fin.” 

“ ’O care if it’s their bloody fin or any other 
bloody part—there ain’t none or we’d see 
’em.” 

“I’ve ’eard as they follers the ship behind, on 
the look-out like, and that they know when 
somebody’s going to die on board.” 

“Yus, thet’s right!” 

The conversation was becoming general and 
animated. 

“I wouldn’ be surprised if they was eating 
of ’im now—lots of ’em swim under the ship, 
waiting . . 

“Your turn next, ol’ Top!” 

“Ever see a shark? I see one in a museum 
once. Ain’t they got teeth, wot? Chore a man’s 
leg off’s easy as butter.” 

“Wish the bar was open—what time d’you say 
it opened?” 

“Oh, my Gawd, nothing to do all the whole 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 69 

bloody day but sit on yer trousers and ’elp wear 
out a chair!” 

“D’you ’ear old Bert go plop? I missed it. 
I’d been waiting an hour and just that moment 
some silly blighter ast me something and I 
missed it!” 

“Wish the bar’d open.” 

I thought, before I came, that I should like to 
meet my fellow man on equal terms, face to face 
and man to man, without any of the false values 
that social distinctions create at home. I wanted 
to get to know the soul of the man who has not 
had the chances of education and all the advan¬ 
tages which wealth bestows on many who are 
perhaps not worth any more in the beginning. 
In a general way I wanted to feel friendly to all 
men and to recognize their equality with me and 
mine with them. I suppose it is unusual in an 
Englishman to feel quite so democratic, but half 
an hour’s conversation like that makes me yearn 
for the society of a bloated, belted earl—even a 
baronet would do. Conversation of that sort 
(and it never ceases, day or night, until the un¬ 
consciousness of sleep interferes with it), takes 
off the keen edge of my interest in my fellow 
man; and that was a special occasion when there 
was something real to talk about. I think it is 
easier to feel kindly to the masses when one is 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


70 

at home with a volume of Karl Marx or almost 
anybody’s book on one’s knee. I must be fitted 
with a long-distance love, for I cannot stand 
very much of them close. My brain refuses to 
work that way. Like the preacher, I try to 
“seek out acceptable words,” but I don’t suc¬ 
ceed in striking one in ten of the required 
variety. It is said to be hard for a man to step 
up in the social scale in England. It is easier 
to step up than down. Nothing but poverty, 
drink, or dirt can bridge the gulf that is set be¬ 
tween the classes. The lower will not accept 
the higher as a companion, however hard the 
latter tries and however amiable he feels. He is 
never accepted as one of them unless he speaks 
the common tongue of misfortune, drink, or 
disease. 

Occasionally an individual of the “lower 
orders” has a brain that does not spoil, or a 
gentle nature that endures and outlives the sor¬ 
did work and circumstances of a mean exist¬ 
ence. His ignorance is no bar to intercourse: 
what is degrading is the confident misinforma¬ 
tion that distinguishes so many of his fellows. 
It is not ignorance but an awful wisdom, de¬ 
formed into monstrosity. A little of it goes a 
long way with me and I drifted away in search 
of Abus as soon as I could go without seeming to 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


7 i 

go to be rid of them. I handed round my com¬ 
mon cigarette case before I went. It deceived 
no one: it might have been of fine gold. One 
man touched his cap, from habit, as he helped 
himself. 

I found Abus by the windlass, looking out to 
sea at a vast school of porpoises that were churn¬ 
ing up the surface of the sea about three quarters 
of a mile from the ship. She was a blessed re¬ 
lief. 




CHAPTER V 

F OR a long time I did not succeed in steer¬ 
ing the boat of Abus’s thought in the direc¬ 
tion I wanted it to go. We talked of every 
superficial subject under heaven and at last 
drifted onto the subject of palmistry. She asked 
me if I knew anything about it and I did not 
scruple to tell her that it was one of my strong 
points. I have told the fortunes of many young 
women, sometimes with light in which I could 
hardly discern the shape of the hand, with com¬ 
plete success. I observed at once that she had 
more judgment than will—I thought she would 
prefer that, and I have seen palmists arrive at 
that, or the opposite profound conclusion, by 
gently squeezing the thumb and bending it. I 
told her that she was capable of the deepest and 
purest attachment and showed her which was 
the mount of Venus. I also asserted that she 
had a very unusual hand and that I had never 
seen one quite like it, which was one of the truest 
things I told her. 

Utilizing much of what I already knew, I 

72 







EGYPTIAN LOVE 


73 

pieced together a fairly creditable fortune which 
pleased her very much. I held her hand in 
such a way that I could press rather firmly at the 
base of the third finger, where lies the median 
nerve that is said to be intimately connected with 
the heart, indicating that this was of paramount 
importance. I never was able to see that it 
made any particular difference with any subject 
upon which I had formerly practised this piece 
of necromancy, but there is no doubt in my mind 
that it produced an effect upon her. I seemed 
to feel a throbbing almost as violent as that of 
the pulse, and the peculiar change of tempera¬ 
ture, rhythmically alternating between warm 
and cool, that I had noticed on the evening be¬ 
fore when I had held her hand. I glanced 
quickly at her face when J noticed it and saw 
that her eyes had a remote look in them which 
argued that she was not paying much attention. 

“You know,” she said, apropos of nothing, “I 
have a box which is made of a horn all polished, 
and it is bound round with silver bands with pic¬ 
tures scratched upon them or raised up—and the 
lid of the box has a very beautiful picture in 
silver, with a chain. And it is with holes through 
it, all cut round the pictures of people under 
some trees.” 

I saw at once that she was remembering some- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


74 

thing she had not seen in this life, for she could 
not explain what was clearly embossing. 

“There is reddish brown powder in that box, 
almost yellow, and I use it in my toilet. . . . 
What for do I use it? I cannot remember 
. . . and there are the sticks, flat and rough, 
with points, which I use to rub. . . .” 

“Rub what?” 

“Oh, it is foolishness! What for should I do 
that! I seem to use them to rub my fingers to 
make them soft.” 

“A manicure set?” 

“What is that? I do not know. I like to 
keep my hands clean and my nails cut and tidy, 
but what for should I rub them with anything? 
That is foolishness. They would get all rough 
at once with the washing, anyhow. My family 
laugh at me for the care I take of my hands, as 
it is.” 

“Remember some more.” 

“Oh, I call to mind a mirror that I use, but 
not of glass. It is thin like the bottom of a fry¬ 
ing pan and so polished I can see my face, but 
the handle is strange . . . it is beautiful, I 
cannot deny that, but . . .” 

“ ‘Beauty touched with strangeness’ is art. 
What is it like?” 

“Is it possible people have such things? I am 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


75 

ashamed . . * but somehow, I see it very dis¬ 
tinctly in my mind . . . something I use very 
much, but the handle is made like a naked body 
. . . smooth and white like ivory. What 

ideas I get!” 

“Look in the mirror and tell me what you 
see,” I said, with my heart beating abominably. 

“I do not see it now. It is of that other life. 
My husband would not let me have such a thing, 
and yet, if I had, I should not like to lose it: it 
is very beautiful, but people ought not to look 
at it. When I see my face in it, it is just the 
same as I see myself in any glass. Except the 
blue ear-rings, and the blue beads in my hair, 
oh, so many, like little sticks are many of them 
and no two are exactly alike. I should think 
they must be made of china: they are so blue.” 

“Do you think you use that powder on your 
face?” 

“I do think so, but, what a nonsense to have a 
yellow face—all yellow!” 

A people as fine as the Egyptians can never 
have used white powder on their faces as the 
pathetic Negroes of American cities do. If 
they were dark, they should have used a deep 
powder, not to alter the colour but to unify it 
and make the artificial bloom which art seems 
to demand as the finish to an elaborate toilette. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


76 

If the Egyptians were white, or nearly white, 
they may still have used turmeric or some other 
yellowish powder, as many of the oriental races 
do . . . that, at least, Abus could never have 
invented, for she herself thought it absurd. To 
me it was an assurance of her sincerity, though 
I have not the faintest idea what Egyptian ladies 
decorated themselves with. Abus could not 
have known, either, of course; yet she remem¬ 
bered it. 

She laughed as she pulled her hand away. 
“It is when you hold my hand like that that I 
talk so foolish—that is enough now; let me go. 

Of course it had to be that moment when 
Ellicot passed me doing his daily “grind” round 
the deck with Beppina’s father. I could see 
clearly that he thought I was “getting on” and 
the thought infuriated me. I do not doubt that 
I frowned and looked all my annoyance, for he 
laughed and winked knowingly as he passed on. 
Abus was utterly innocent of the meaning and 
the import of his smiles and winks. She did 
not approve of him and thought him vulgar. I 
do not think she saw them at this particular 
time at all. 

“Why do you look so angry?” she asked. “Is 
it because I take my hand away?” 

“No, I was thinking . . . Abus, how do 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


77 

you come to have such a peculiar name; is it 
Welsh?” 

“No, and it is not my name that I am chris¬ 
tened. I am christened Lily Gertrude but I was 
never called so. When I was two, my mother 
tell me that I changed my name one day and 
would hear no other than Abus. It was a won¬ 
der in the village that I said my name was so 
and would hear no other. So they called me 
Abus, though when I got older they spell it 
Abbess because that at least is an English word. 
They called me Lily because I was so white, 
but I cannot bear it. Abus has no meaning now, 
but Theoboama said it means a sigh . . . 

that is pretty, is it not?” 

“Tell me about him.” 

“No, Joseph, I will not tell you of him, not 
now.” 

“Then tell me more of the things you use, be¬ 
cause I may be able to find out something more 
about him—for you.” 

“I cannot remember much now . . . and 

if you force me to tell you, I might say things 
which were not true, without meaning to speak 
untruth. I remember little or nothing, only 
some large bottles of pottery, very tall, though 
there are little ones, too. They have two round 
handles at the top and are pointed at the other 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


78 

end. I do not know what they contain; differ¬ 
ent things, I suppose. In some places there are 
many of them, almost buried in the sand. There 
is a smell as of wine in that room.” 

“If they have pointed bottoms, they cannot 
stand up then?” 

“They are strange. I have never seen any¬ 
thing like them in Wales, but we use them like 
that. I suppose it is the custom. They stand 
up in the rings of pottery material or stone 
which are set in the ground, though sometimes 
you can move them about.” 

I drew the shapes according to her description 
on the back of an envelope. I drew several 
varieties, purposely drawing them wrong to see 
if she would correct them. She had meant the 
Egyptian amphora which was used for oil and 
wine. That is beyond all shadow of doubt. I 
tried her with many different patterns, some 
of which she thought much more practical, 
but she said, “Mine are not like that.” She 
was absolutely sure what she meant and talked 
of everything as if they were still her prop¬ 
erty. 

A loud squall from little Llewellyn, her 
nephew, aged six, interrupted any further mem¬ 
ories at this juncture, and I inwardly cursed 
little Llewellyn, though he was a nice little boy 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


79 

who should not have been cursed. In a mo¬ 
ment the dreamer was gone. The practical 
mother side of Abus rushed him to her cabin, 
where she bathed and bound up his injured fin¬ 
ger, telling him that if he would touch knives 
in the galley when the cook was not looking, 
they would always bite him because he didn’t 
know their names, so he could not expect them 
to play with him. I was beginning to wonder if 
she would ever come back, and had already 
started in search of a book to wile away the 
time when she reappeared, leading a proud 
child with something to show every other child 
on board with the vivid comments and specula¬ 
tions of childhood on the danger he had passed 
through. I felt it was going to be difficult to 
bring her attention back to Egypt, but I took 
her hand as she sat down and the look I had 
come to love to see in her eyes flitted across her 
face like a bird shadow. 

“Would you like to go back to Egypt?” I 
asked. 

“How I would like to go!” 

“And would you come with me?” 

She hesitated. “No,” she replied, “and yes 
. . . gladly—if you were a woman and not 

a man, I would go. . . . Theoboama would 

not let me go with you now.” 


8 o 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“But if there were no Theoboama, you would? 
And perhaps he would let you.” 

She shook her head very decidedly. For a 
moment the thought of her husband did not oc¬ 
cur to her, so deeply was she immersed in the 
past and the incredible present. She glanced 
about as if expecting someone to speak to her. 
I fancied somebody had spoken to her and she 
did not hear. The evening was unusually quiet 
on board. Everybody was sitting still, reading 
or talking, the noisy element was in the bar¬ 
room, which was a long way from where we 
were sitting, the children were absorbed with 
the account of Llewellyn’s injury, and many 
people were preparing for the evening meal. 

“Theoboama is here,” said Abus, suddenly, 
“but I cannot see him. He says I shall not go 
to Egypt, that it is not yet time. He has a look 
on his face of one who is very jealous, not angry, 
but jealous nevertheless. He smiles, I think 
now. . . .” 

“But you said you couldn’t see him?” 

“Stop . . . stop your talk and hold my 

hand,” she said sharply. “Listen ... I 
feel in my arms . . . he is going to be more 

clear in a moment. He says you may see him, 
too, but not if ... he smiles. He is say¬ 
ing that if you hold my hand and are quite pure 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


81 


in your heart, and ... I mean, if you are 
pure to me and would not wrong me, you shall 
see him.” 

“Really see him?” 

“As much as you see me ... if you have 
only pure thoughts about me. You are to look 
steadily and without moving your eyes or blink¬ 
ing them at all.” 

We were sitting on the open deck, and the 
prospect of a supernatural manifestation amid 
the sights and sounds of the steerage of a liner 
was the last imaginable probability. I felt that 
Abus was absolutely honest in her memories, 
and some things seemed to bear proof in them¬ 
selves that they were genuine memories beyond 
the tomb. If I had pure thoughts! I had not 
had the least vestige of a pure thought about 
Abus in the beginning, but now, I was so car¬ 
ried away with a real and deep interest in the 
extraordinary developments that followed day 
after day in regard to her, that I had little room 
for any feeling but that of wonder, alternating 
sharply with waves of unbelief. 

My ridicule, no word of which escaped me 
of course, did not take effect upon my mind. 
All the time something very deep within me 
said: “Such things have been, and this is a true 
case, however many impostures there may be.” 


82 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


My intelligence chafed before the supernatural, 
my intuition accepted everything as perfectly 
natural, without questioning. I held the little 
hand of my companion and tried my best to con¬ 
trol myself, for I was trembling with excite¬ 
ment. What was it that I was going to see? I 
had no doubt whatever that I should see some¬ 
thing, and something strange and inexplicable. 

For some moments I imagined I saw some¬ 
thing corresponding to the movement I had 
seen in the night air on the second-class deck. 
In a few moments there was no doubt about it 
whatever. There was a movement as clear and 
rapid as that which is sometimes seen above a 
locomotive in a station, a clear, shimmering 
movement caused by escaping heat. It concen¬ 
trated itself at about six feet from where we sat 
and I certainly did begin to see something un¬ 
usual and inexplicable forming within it, some¬ 
thing like a reddish haze which slowly took 
shape and became a figure. 

It gradually became denser and more solid¬ 
looking until it was just not transparent. I 
saw the long folds of an oriental dress and gold 
ornaments vaguely indicated. I saw the face of 
a very distinguished man; not very young 
. . . I saw his astonishing eyes, long, deep, 

slanting eyes in which the whole mystery of the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 83 

Orient and the ancient world seemed to be sym¬ 
bolized : they looked straight and intensely at me 
and I felt ashamed ever to have had a suspicion 
of light thoughts about Abus. He glanced at 
Abus proudly and lovingly with a strong, mas¬ 
culine, possessive air which gave me more than 
a momentary twinge of jealousy. She belonged 
to him and I was . . . what was I? 

Somehow I thought he gave me an almost 
friendly glance through his antagonism. Was 
it that he tolerated me as one who exalts the 
desirability of his lady by desiring her in vain? 
The moment the thought of rivalry came into 
my mind, he smiled and raised his hand in an¬ 
cient salutation: then he became vague in out¬ 
line; I became aware of the auxiliary binna¬ 
cle showing through his chest and he slowly 
vanished. 

“Did you see him?” whispered Abus, anx¬ 
iously, I thought. 

“Yes.” 

“Clearly, as clear as you see me?” 

“No, but clearly enough to see him smile.” 

“He is not angry . . . with me, nor with 

you, but he says you shall not go with me in 
Egypt. It is as he says. You think of me as 
you should not think of a woman who belongs 
to another. But if you saw him at all, it means 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


84 

you are not bad and would not wrong me. That 
is why Theoboama smiled. If you thought of 
me . . . like a bad woman . . . you 

would not have seen him at all. In this life I 
am not for you . . . and he also is being 

punished . . . and I, too.” 

“And your husband?” 

She hung her head and blushed deeply. She 
murmured something I could not hear, for the 
supper bell clashed upon the air suddenly and 
chairs were moved. Bored and hungry people 
were clattering toward the dining room for the 
great event of their day. She was repeating 
something beneath her breath and, I think, did 
not mind my bending over her to listen, as I hid 
her embarrassment from the other passengers 
by so doing. She had not withdrawn her hand, 
which hung in my grasp like something forgot¬ 
ten, and as I took the other to help her to get up 
out of the depths of her folding chair, I heard 
her repeating her litany of “I love my husband 
. . . I love my husband ... I love my 

husband . . .” and suddenly: “I must go see 

that those children are made ready for supper. 
Good-bye . . . thank you. Let me go.” 


CHAPTER VI 

‘Les jours se passent, et se ressemblent.”— Verlaine. 


I N NO place in the world is one day so like 
another as on board a big ship in calm 
weather. The hours and the days slip by and 
nothing gets done, nothing happens beneath the 
eternal vigilance of the watch high up and re¬ 
mote from such dross as steerage passengers. 
The wildest enthusiasm is evinced when a por¬ 
poise pokes his nose out of the vasty deep or a 
turtle is encountered floating about in the great 
spaces of the sea like a child lost in the green 
meadows. Flying fish are exciting for half an 
hour or so and after that cease to be a novelty 
which anybody notices, like aeroplanes. 

What a chance for education is wasted in all 
this vacant time when those who go down to the 
sea in ships are in a frame of mind to absorb in¬ 
formation of almost any kind greedily! If 
someone can recognize the Great Bear and find 
the polestar, anxious people begin to assemble 
to listen to his words of wisdom. The wildest 
superstitions find expression on every topic un- 
85 





86 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


der heaven and are generally solemnly accepted 
as immutable facts. The depth of ignorance 
which the masses possess is unfathomable. In 
their idle moments, like these, one begins to 
realize how this is the veneer of what we are 
pleased to call civilization. The people who 
go to Australia are not the dregs of the English 
people; on the contrary, they are the best of the 
labouring and artisan classes, for Australia is 
strict about immigration and is no longer will¬ 
ing to be a dumping-ground for Britain’s human 
refuse. Every man and woman must be healthy 
and of decent reputation. They must have a 
trade and a certain amount of money or be guar¬ 
anteed in some way so that they will not become 
public charges. Australia feels competent to 
supply the demand of her own prisons and hos¬ 
pitals without appealing to the Mother Country. 

And all these thousands of human souls, each 
knowing some tiny trade, a little group of primi¬ 
tive facts, and a modicum of experience, which 
enables them to keep alive and continue their 
race, are having a real holiday, often for the 
first time in their lives. The labourer, from 
the time he leaves school, has little time to sit 
down and reflect upon the origin of man and the 
causes of his existence. He must work at some¬ 
thing which does not engage more than a third 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


87 

of his brain capacity, little as that is. At home, 
unless he is too tired to do anything at all but 
sleep, he must contribute to the life of the home, 
which his labour outside supports. 

The average labourer is often too tired to love 
his wife and children; the resting muscles have 
little to spare for emotion. He does not read 
nor attempt to read anything but the newspaper, 
and that becomes little more than a ponderous 
perusal of the large type and a look at the pic¬ 
tures, ending in slumber. If he is sufficiently 
intelligent to get books from a circulating 
library and attempt to read, he seldom finds 
any one willing or capable of directing his read¬ 
ing or to explain what he does not understand. 
He has no time to go deeply into anything, even 
if he has a desire for education. He reads for 
amusement if he reads at all, and the things 
which amuse him at forty are very little in ad¬ 
vance of the things which amused him at four¬ 
teen. Never before has he had long days and 
weeks on end when there is absolutely nothing 
for him to do and the anxiety of keeping a job 
and of providing food for himself and his family 
entirely removed from him. His brain relaxes 
until it chafes for occupation which smoking 
and drinking do not adequately supply. He 
wishes he had brought some books with him, 


88 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


but they were forgotten because, as he never 
thought of them before, it was not likely he 
would begin to think of them during the excite¬ 
ment of packing up for a trip across the world. 

The steerage passenger is in a receptive mood 
in which he would accept anything with interest 
and gratitude. Everybody is making a great 
effort to appear to best advantage. Everybody 
wants to be affable to the stranger and to be 
liked by him and to make friends. The compe¬ 
tition for food is gone out of life, temporarily, 
and there is no need to regard the neighbour as 
a rival or an enemy. Some who never wear a 
collar at home—indeed, have no collars—will 
put a clean handkerchief round their necks to 
be a little more dressy at meals than at other 
times. Nails that have never been systemati¬ 
cally cleaned begin to come in for a certain 
amount of attention. No word of criticism has 
been spoken but perhaps a smart neighbour at 
the dinner table has glanced at the fingers with 
some disgust, causing the hand to crumple them 
into its palm. Little things are beginning to be 
important because the big things are provided 
for: is that the beginnings of civilization? The 
humbler imitate the more distinguished in little 
ways that are pathetic to see. Everybody is 
attempting to give the impression that he is a 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 89 

little higher up in the social scale than he hap¬ 
pens to be. The snob blooms into the fine 
flower of his kind, of course, but for the most 
part the influence of a long sea voyage is good in 
that it makes men think and wish to be better 
and finer within the bounds of their imagina¬ 
tion. Perhaps it is the first time they have ever 
had occasion to measure themselves against their 
fellow men in social matters with minds free 
from the stultifying anxieties of every-day life 
on shore. But there is nothing to read which 
tells them of sea and sky, the countries they are 
passing by, and the lives of those who live there, 
so different from their own. They do not want 
the religious tracts that are sometimes distrib¬ 
uted, though they sometimes read them through 
to the bitter end, as slowly as possible, without 
deriving any mental reaction from the words at 
all. All the magazines on board are read from 
cover to cover of course, but they do not last very 
long. There are countless hours when there is 
absolutely nothing to do at all but eat and sit and 
sleep and eat . . . and sit again. 

There is a chance to make civilization mean 
something to those who are under the heel or in 
the death-grip of the ogre called “Work.” 
Their minds are open and ready for informa¬ 
tion and suggestions. They talk their rudi- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


90 

mentary metaphysics, religion, and politics in 
terms which an educated man can hardly believe 
are genuine ... he feels, unwillingly, that 
these people are as different from himself as if 
they were of another species, as different as a 
lizard from a fish. And what waste . . . 

what waste it is! 

Ellicot and I discussed this matter at great 
length on many occasions, and when I see his 
name to-day, prominently interested in the Mis¬ 
sion to Seaman and such-like institutions, I won¬ 
der if he ever has waves of memory which bring 
back to him, in his respectable security, the flot¬ 
sam of any of those conversations. 

I hesitated for a long while before I told 
Ellicot anything about Abus and the discoveries 
I was making in her. I did him an injustice. 
In the frank panoply of his sensual orgy of the 
moment I forget the other, deeper side to his 
nature. I told him about it at last, however, in 
a superficial way, expecting him to jeer at my 
credulity and hint that the guile of women for 
the entanglement of men’s hearts was unfath¬ 
omable and illimitable. He did no such thing. 
He was intensely interested and suggested, what 
I never thought of myself, that the sooner I 
could get her to accompany me to a museum of 
Greek and Egyptian remains, the better. He 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 91 

observed that if she had had a carved ivory 
mirror and remembered most vividly the refine¬ 
ments of feminine adornment she was no serf, 
but had been a great lady in her past life. 

“It would be amazingly interesting if she 
could remember something which could be con¬ 
nected up with something we can absolutely 
prove. Try and get her date. Abus sounds 
Egyptian to me, not knowing what anything 
Egyptian sounds like, but I can imagine an 
ideograph of an ibis and a pussycat and waggly 
serpent meaning 1 Abus’ very easily! Theo- 
boama suggests the Greek influence in Egypt: 
Mrs. Kokke Physkon . . 

“And who may she be?” 

“Less than nothing now, James, but your ig¬ 
norance is truly distressing. Old Physkon mar¬ 
ried a girl from Alexandria called Cleopatra 
Kokke, who became somewhat talked about 
because she had an affair with an old gentleman 
of fifty-four, named Julius Caesar. He was a 
Roman general, and you know how roguey 
poguey elderly military men are apt to be. 
When he went back to Rome he left a good- 
looking chap named Antony in charge of his 
army—yes, I see you have guessed the sequel, it 
happens only too often that way!” 

“Well, as I was saying, that would make her 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


92 

date somewhere about B. C. 50, if she ever pow¬ 
dered her nose with yellow to go and dine with 
them. Then again she might have been earlier 
than that. Herodotus must have been person¬ 
ally conducting himself-through Egypt around 
B. C. 460. It’s some time since I read the 
Euterpe, the book in which he describes Egypt, 
but, if she was alive in his day, she may have 
met him! Try her on Herodotus. Try and 
find out who Pharaoh was in her time. James, 
let’s swap girls: I’d like to ask her a lot of ques¬ 
tions.” 

Knowing how much Abus disliked Ellicot I 
knew she would never allow him to discuss such 
subjects with her, even for a moment. I felt 
also that she would strongly disapprove of being 
discussed with him at all, so I told him that was 
entirely out of the question. Nor was he really 
very anxious to do it, but he gave me a number 
of useful suggestions to think over. His classi¬ 
cal knowledge prompted all sorts of combina¬ 
tions ; he knew in such an intimate way who was 
alive with whom and exactly when generals 
fought and potentates travelled that I was 
tempted a dozen times to risk Abus’s displeasure 
and to try to bring them together. But then 
. . . I had seen Theoboama only mistily 
. . . and I would not trust Ellicot with any- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


93 

thing feminine that had the remotest interest in 
me for a minute longer than was absolutely 
necessary. He was a great deal more fascinat¬ 
ing to women than I, with all my conceit, ever 
thought of being. I knew very well he could 
win any woman away from me that he was ex¬ 
posed to, almost without knowing he was doing 
it. Love-making was second nature with him; 
it was his hobby and diversion, he claimed that 
he sharpened his wits on girls and they were the 
keenest wits I have ever encountered in any¬ 
body. No, while I could keep Abus, even the 
little I had of her, I meant to hold the centre of, 
the stage. 

“Perhaps she is Queen Tii rediviva; she looks 
like her,” he said, musingly. “She was the 
beautiful peasant with whom Amenophis III 
fell in love when he was on a hunting expedi¬ 
tion. St. Chad Boscawen, the Egyptologist, 
told me the story of that romance, how Pharaoh 
gathered her up and made her Queen of Egypt. 
Perhaps she has reverted to the peasant quite 
naturally in this incarnation. She wouldn’t be 
Cleopatra, she’d have been considerably more 
up and coming. Habit once acquired is hard to* 
break! 

“I have it, James. She’s Potiphar’s wife, and 
you are Joseph; mean, sheeny Joseph, but toler- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


94 

ably reformed into a decent enough chap at last, 
old man! No offence intended, and all that. 
Theoboama may not be an Egyptian at all. The 
description of him sounds more Medic or Per¬ 
sian to me, and he might easily have acquired a 
Greek name if he hailed from Alexandria. It 
was the custom for aliens resident in Egypt to 
take an Egyptian name. Maybe he was her 
brother or someone who loved her before she 
was sent to Egypt. I must certainly tell you 
about Yusuf and Zuleikha some day. It’s a 
pity you don’t like poetry.” 

“Can’t you . . . ?” 

“Sorry, old man, I must be going now. Bepp’s 
got an appointment with her priest and I need a 
little instruction before I am finally received 
into the Church. The theory of Indulgences 
is what I am studying just now, and I am ten 
minutes overdue now.” 



too.9QgosoQo^o<roeos>Q 




CHAPTER VII 

A S WE came nearer to Freemantle I had 
begun to look forward hopefully to tak¬ 
ing Abus to a museum. There must be some¬ 
thing of the kind there, I thought, and I had no 
doubt in my mind that it would be a marvellous 
experience. It was not so easy as I anticipated 
to get her to agree to accompany me, though I 
could see she was eager to go, and eager to go 
with someone who could tell her something 
about the exhibits. When she refused, I could 
hardly believe my ears, for I had regarded it as 
a foregone conclusion. This was not an ordi¬ 
nary matter, and I felt that I must move heaven 
and earth to make her come. She must . . . ! 

“I should not wish any one to know I went on 
the shore with you ... I am not such a 
woman . . .” 

And I realized, suddenly, and with amaze¬ 
ment, that going on shore with me would mean 
only one thing in the eyes of our fellow passen¬ 
gers. One forgets that in the lives of the un¬ 
educated any departure from the things of sense 










96 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

is unusual and suspect. A museum, to their 
minds, is a place to exercise the children away 
from street traffic or else a courting ground, 
what else? I had to bring all my powers of 
persuasion to bear upon her before I could get 
her to listen to me at all: I was in despair at her 
steady refusal. 

But at the last moment she decided to come; 
however, making one condition only: that we 
should go to no hotel nor leave the boat together, 
obviously in company. We went to Perth by 
train separately, therefore, and I met her at the 
railway station. 

Western Australia has a peculiar brand of 
fierce, desiccating heat which makes one forget 
that there is any other weather anywhere. From 
Freemantle, which is the port, to Perth, the city 
which passengers visit during the few hours 
the ship stops to discharge cargo, the train skims 
through an atmosphere in which even its speed 
does not produce an illusion of coolness. It 
was hot air which rushed past the blinding win¬ 
dows, the hot air which had twisted the blue 
gums into strange contortions and made their 
trunks like bones that have passed through a fur¬ 
nace fire. The long sickle-like leaves of euca¬ 
lyptus trees throw almost no shadow upon the 
rolling dunes, tufted with dead grass and strug- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


97 

gling, stunted vegetation. The sand looks hard 
with whiteness and the heat of the bleak, eternal, 
and unappeasable summer. 

We had lunch together at a restaurant, since 
food was needful, and ascertained from the res¬ 
taurant keeper that there was a museum, though 
he could tell us no more about it than its general 
situation. We took a cab there and I asked the 
first attendant at once if there was an Egyptian 
section. There was not, but he thought there 
was a room in which there were many statues 
and some Egyptian things might well be among 
them. There were all sorts—Pass to the right 
—and we passed. 

Somehow the reality of Abus’s dreams and 
experience seemed to become less credible to me 
when I was on shore. She was not so confident 
and self-possessed herself, for one thing, as she 
was on board ship. Fresh from an English 
university and as thorough a snob as most boys 
of my age, I felt uneasy with Abus in her best 
clothes. They were dreadful, and I felt that 
every eye was criticising and questioning us. I 
was dressed in an ordinary suit, gray, with white 
trousers and a soft hat, but I was conscious that 
it looked painfully dressy in Perth, especially 
beside my odd-looking companion. On board, 
Abus wore a simple skirt and blouse, without 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


98 

anything exaggerated about either. To-day she 
had put on a black dress, evidently her Sunday 
outfit, which belonged to no period that I could 
identify. It suggested the 1880 bustle period, 
with the bustle omitted. It was a close-fitting 
creation, long and decorated down the front 
with an intricate pattern of dangly strings of 
small black beads which shed themselves every 
now and then. Her head was enveloped in a 
spotless white sunbonnet with thin black stripes 
which she had put on because it hid her face 
from any but those exactly in front of her. It 
had a kind of flounce, like the petticoat of an 
armchair, which reached to her rectangular 
shoulders, and she walked very stiffly, with her 
arms slightly bent and her elbows as close to her 
body as her corsets would allow. She was gro¬ 
tesque in a way, and I was embarrassed by the 
notice I thought we should create. Fortunately 
Perth did not see us with my eyes. 

Another thing contributed nothing to put me 
at ease. Walk how I would, she was always a 
little behind me as if hiding from someone. She 
would not take my arm, but when we passed the 
turnstile in the museum she was pale with ex¬ 
citement and fright. She clutched my sleeve 
and held on to it a little above the elbow as I led 
her into the sculpture gallery. She had never 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


99 

seen anything like it before and she held her 
breath with the wonder of it. 

I saw nothing Egyptian at first glance, but it 
seemed to me I had better improve the shining 
hour by telling her as much about the sculptures, 
which of course were all casts of things in 
European museums, as I could. The winged 
bulls of Assur-bani-pal, for instance, that are 
one of the glories of the British Museum, were 
on the left as we entered the little gallery, and I 
began to tell her a little about Assur-bani-pal 
and the civilizations of Babylon and Nineveh; of 
the great walls and hanging gardens and of the 
excellent laws of Hammurabi. I told her that 
the huge cities which were once the centre and 
fountain head of civilization were now no more 
than huge mounds which men in our time were 
digging up slowly to learn something of our 
forefathers, dead and forgotten for thousands of 
years. Hoping to engage her interest, I pro¬ 
ceeded to tell her of the Babylonian version of 
the Flood in the Bible and how the ancients 
wrote upon soft clay with a little stick instead 
of with ink upon paper. 

She gaped up at the winged bulls without any 
particular interest. Her mind was not taking 
in anything I said. I was disappointed and felt 
that as a showman I was not going to be a sue- 


100 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

cess. She stood almost behind me and held 
firmly to my sleeve so as not to lose me among 
the stern white crowd of figures on every side. 
Suddenly she started violently and murmured 
something I could not catch. 

“What is it?” I asked. 

“I know that man,” she replied, as if she were 
afraid he would overhear her. There was not 
a soul in the gallery besides ourselves and I 
thought of course that she must be seeing a 
vision. 

“Who? Whom do you see: is it Theo- 
boama?” 

“No—that man over there.” 

“But there is no man there.” 

“I mean, that photograph . . .” 

Fortunately I remembered suddenly that a 
peasant is very apt to call anything a photo¬ 
graph, and I was right. She meant a colossal 
head which had escaped my notice. It was 
Egyptian, of course. 

“I know that man!” 

The unbelief which terra firma almost con¬ 
firmed in me surged to the surface. I could not 
treat the matter quite seriously among the stat¬ 
ues of the past. They were so cold and remote: 
we were so small and alive, so intensely solid and 
material, while they seemed to be wraiths es- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


IOI 


caped from Eternity, frozen and labelled. Side 
by side, at a little distance from the great head 
to which I led her almost against her will, I 
noticed the figures of two gods. I could not 
keep the irony out of my voice as I said: 

“And do you perhaps know Isis and Osiris, 
who are sitting next to your friend?” 

She looked up at the impassive faces of each 
without recognition. “No,” she said gravely, 
“I do not know them, but this man I know 
. . . as he were my own brother!” 

Abus was seriously claiming acquaintance 
with a priest of Ptah, dated “About B. C. 1300. 
From Thebes.” I was speechless with aston¬ 
ishment in spite of the fact that I had brought 
her to the museum in the hope of hearing just 
such revelations. B*ut now it had happened 
. . . and I could not doubt her absolute sin¬ 

cerity for a moment. 

There was a glass case containing a few genu¬ 
ine shards and fragments of various sorts. That 
and another upon the other side of the room 
seemed to be all there was to see that was genu¬ 
ine. There was not even a mummy; I had 
expected that a mummy would awaken some 
interesting memories ... I gazed around, 
unwilling to believe in its absence. I felt 
cheated . . . 


102 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“Those are the bottles I told you about, but 
they are all broken; that is the kind of handles 
like those you drew for me on the ship, and here 
is the ring for them to stand in, as I told you. 
Those are like I use, they must be Egyptian. 
But why are they all broken?” 

“Some which are still whole are preserved in 
great museums, but you must remember that 
nearly three thousand years have passed since 
those pieces of pottery held wine and oil for the 
Egyptians to whom they belonged. A lot of 
things can happen to a perishable object in three 
thousand years!” 

Abus scarcely heard. She was looking for 
things she knew and did not want to be told 
anything about them. She forgot to keep hold 
of my sleeve and hurried across to the other glass 
case alone, in which there was a replica of a 
golden crown, the original of which is in the 
British Museum, and a dagger and several other 
small objects. 

“That is Theoboama’s sword,” she said, in an 
awe-struck whisper, pointing to the dagger, 
“and that is his crown—no, it is not his, because 
his is narrower at the sides and at the back, but 
that one is like it. And . . . those are like 

my beads, my blue beads. Come, there must be 
more . . . perhaps we shall find my box 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


103 

and find out what for I use the yellow powder. 
It cannot . . . cannot be for my face, that 

is foolishness l” 

“Where shall we see next? It is not possible 
there is nothing else of mine!” She took my 
coat lapels in both hands and looked up eagerly 
into my face. She was irresistible in her en¬ 
thusiasm. 

“There is only one thing more which is ancient 
and beautiful,” I said; and, grateful for the 
lack of interest which the people of Perth have 
in sculptured antiquities, I put my arms round 
her and kissed her. 

She was utterly taken by surprise, but sh.e did 
not struggle. She drew herself up and looked 
at me coldly. 

“I am not now willing you should kiss me, 
Joseph, and I have never let you think so. For 
why have you done this? I am ashamed for 
you.” 

In a few minutes peace was restored by 
apology, and I began to tell her expurgated 
stories of the Greek gods and goddesses, to which 
she listened attentively. The piece de resistance 
of the gallery was, of course, the Venus of Milo. 
The original,. I told her, was not made of plaster 
like the one before us, but carved in marble, 
and it stood in a great museum in Paris called 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


104 

the Louvre. I told her how people had dis¬ 
puted about the position in which her arms must 
have been and of the legend that when she was 
found she was complete, and that the arms were 
broken during a fight that took place for the 
possession of her. She gazed at Venus like a 
simple sight-seer, and made no comment. I 
could not fathom what she was thinking nor how 
much she understood of what I had told her 
about that or any of the others. 

“What do you think of her,” I asked, “and 
do you perchance know her?” 

“No, I do not know her . . . she is very 

beautiful, but . . . all bare!” she answered, 

blushing a little. “Is she a Frenchwoman? 
. . . But come and see ... if we can 

find the palaces that I remember . . . oh, 

so long ago ... it seems to me even before 
Egypt, I think. They are white, and even the 
windows are of stone: they have no glass in the 
windows, but patterns, all cut in stone like 
. . . like crochet work. Do you think we 

can find anything about them?” 

I felt dubious enough about those palaces, but 
seeing that the Greek gods could not hold her 
attention, I started in a new direction where, by 
chance, my eye fell upon some architectural pic¬ 
tures and photographs. Among them were 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


io 5 

some enlarged photographs of Indian palaces, 
to which she ran eagerly. The Taj Mahal was 
one of them, I recollect, and there were some 
others which showed windows with lattice of 
carven stone. 

“There,” she said, “are the windows! No, 
they are made like that, but they are not of my 
palace that I remember. They look like them 
a little, and if I looked at them long, perhaps I 
might imagine that I remember them. I think 
they are not the same . . . oh, that is so 

long ago! I think I am a very little girl of ten 
or twelve at most when I saw them. And these 
are only photographs in brown, but I remember 
a shining white and deep blue sky and pools in 
which there are tiles with patterns, in colours, 
and fishes that eat from my hand, and roses and 
irises . . . Joseph, can I have imagined all 

that? There are such places in the world, are 
there not, where a little girl might have played 
with a white goat? Joseph, I love all the 
things I have told you, but when I think of those 
palaces which I remember not nearly so dis¬ 
tinctly as the others, I feel as if I must cry out 
aloud ... I shake inside ... I feel 
it, all down the front of my bodie. I never 
thought of the little white goat till this minute, 
but I shall never forget him again! Oh, Joseph 


106 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

. . . do you think I am a little mad after 

all?” 

I comforted her as well as I could, for she 
was really disturbed by all the wonders she had 
seen. Perhaps also the blinding heat affected 
her. She clung to my arm without reserve for 
protection and comfort, the faint vague shadows 
of which I endeavoured to supply. I was not 
a little bewildered myself at all that had hap¬ 
pened. The situation of comforting an Egyp¬ 
tian princess for, among other evils, the loss of 
a pet goat, dead perhaps some three thousand 
years, tickled my sense of the ludicrous, but what 
else was there to do? I began to wonder how 
insanity can be recognized in its more recondite 
forms, but I never seriously entertained the 
idea that Abus was insane. Could anybody 
have looked at her once and continued to believe 
in it? I couldn’t: she was so utterly reasonable 
and matter-of-fact on every other subject, and 
so apologetic withal, both believing in and dis¬ 
believing in her own memories. She was un¬ 
educated, of course, but she had a good mind: 
I never met a more normal person in my life 
than she was. 

Ellicot’s idea that she was Potiphar’s wife 
kept recurring to my mind. She was not my 
conception of the sleek Egyptian adulteress in 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 107 

whom I had been taught, charitably, to believe 
as part of the “Word of God.” And if I were 
indeed a reincarnation of Joseph, I was aware 
that one aspect of my virtues had undergone a 
violent change, for Abus appealed to me as no 
woman had ever done before and it was due to 
her remote, cold dignity that we were not lovers 
at that hour—no moral scruples of mine. She 
tucked her hand under my arm and I held it in 
both my own, trying hard to enter into her 
dream and to see and feel with her with the hon¬ 
est desire to help and sympathize. 

Abus recovered command of herself in ten 
minutes or so and I offered to take her back to 
the ship. No, indeed, she wanted to see the pic¬ 
tures all painted by hand that were in another 
part of the building, if there were no more relics 
of Egypt to be seen. She was quite well, in 
blooming healthy she would not be foolish again, 
nothing was the matter. Perhaps it was the 
heat. She took off her sunbonnet and we 
walked upstairs to see the picture collection. 

Supposing that her taste in pictures would be 
of the simplest, I called her attention to Frank 
Dicksee’s canvas which hung on the staircase. 
It was a picture which had a great success at the 
Royal Academy in the year it appeared and was 
entitled, “Seated One Day at the Organ.” I 


io8 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

suppose it needs no further explanation. It 
represents a young woman seated at an organ 
with a young man bending over her with Royal 
Academy oozing from him at every pore. 
There is an effect of sunlight streaming in 
through some inexpensive stained-glass win¬ 
dows, which was considered highly original and 
wonderful in its day. The picture contains all 
the elements I despise in painting, from its 
“pure” sense appeal to the paltry light effect, but 
it is undeniably good of its kind. I urged her 
to notice it, thinking that to her it would prob¬ 
ably be a revelation of beauty. 

“It is beautiful,” she said. “Yes, I suppose 
that is a very beautiful picture, but I do not care 
for it. For me, I prefer that old man’s head 
. . . that for me is beautiful: I cannot tell 

why it is so beautiful, for he is only a simple old 
man and not very good-looking . . . why 

is that?” 

She had found a Rembrandt, not a real one of 
course, in Perth, but one of the admirable repro¬ 
ductions, almost exactly the size of the original 
and, at a distance, indistinguishable from the 
real thing. There were a good many of these in 
the gallery and they were a welcome sight after 
many weeks in the steerage. Abus liked the 
Watteaux and the Paters, but preferred a little 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


109 

Velasquez princess to either. She made few 
direct comments for fear of appearing to slight 
my possible taste, which she assumed must be 
different from her own. When pointedly in¬ 
vited to express an opinion she did so, and when 
she did it was always interesting and more than 
remarkable from her, seeing that she had never 
seen anything of the kind in her life before. 
There was a roomful of modern pictures, for 
the most part very tiresome, but I stopped be¬ 
hind while she preceded me to gloat over the 
tiniest picture there, a gem by J. W. Morice, the 
Canadian. We were in the last room which 
leads one out again onto the gallery where the 
Old Masters are hung. Abus, enjoying herself 
thoroughly, had just disappeared round the 
corner and when I caught up with her she was 
lost in genuine admiration of a picture before 
which so much admiration is feigned. 

“For me that is the most beautiful of all,” she 
said. “It is so beautiful that it speaks to me. 
I should like to have that one for my own. It 
is the most beautiful of all . . . for me,” 

she added shyly. “I dare say I should not ad¬ 
mire it if I knew more about it as you do I” 

It was the Mona Lisa who had claimed an¬ 
other victim for her amazing smile. It had 
been an amazing afternoon. The excitement 


no 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


of it had exhausted me somewhat and the heat 
was dry and dreadful. When we came out of 
the museum there was not a cab or conveyance 
of any kind to be seen, so we were obliged to 
walk. I meant to find some place where we 
could have tea before going back to the ship 
for, although our sailing had been put off from 
3 P.M. until 7 P.M., I knew very well that Abus 
would insist on going back to the ship before 
dark. I had tried to persuade her to dine with 
me, but that she absolutely refused. 

She was very white and shaken by all the new 
and wonderful things she had seen. She took 
my arm now and walked beside me without re¬ 
serve, and without thinking of the proprieties, 
for which I was profoundly thankful. She 
hardly spoke and presently I felt that all was not 
well with her. She would not admit that she 
felt ill, but she became suddenly urgent about 
getting back to the ship without stopping any¬ 
where for tea. 

Fortunately we were near a hotel when the 
awful thing happened. I would omit the de¬ 
tail of the truth if I could explain satisfactorily 
how I came to take her into a hotel after promis¬ 
ing faithfully that I would not so much as sug¬ 
gest it. Abus had a violent attack of nausea in 
the public street. I frankly confess that I 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


hi 


didn’t know what to do. She was unable to 
walk, almost unable to stand, and there was 
nothing in the way of a vehicle that could be 
hired anywhere. I did the only thing possible 
before the inevitable crowd could gather, 
namely, picked her up and carried her bodily 
into the nearest hotel, telling the clerk she was 
my wife and that my name was Higgs. It was 
not a large hotel and there was no elevator. I 
carried her up to the best room they had vacant 
and laid her gently on the bed. I ordered ice 
and brandy and several other things which 
might be useful and determined to see how she 
would be after a rest, before calling in a doctor, 
which, I fancied, would complicate matters in 
regard to keeping the affair as quiet as possible. 
I removed her bonnet and undid a few hooks at 
the back of her neck. She did not seem to have 
fainted but she would not answer me. 

Abus lay straight with her arms at her sides, 
her thin black dress revealing her delicate little 
body. She looked like a slender mummy on the 
white coverlet, and as I propped her head up a 
little I noticed that she was undergoing some 
sort of change. It was indescribable. She did 
not change colour, she was paler than usual, but 
her mouth was still its flaming red. Her ex¬ 
pression changed and slowly her face became 


112 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


fixed with a strange smile, different somehow 
from her own, making her look more like Queen 
Tii than ever. I felt in my bones that she was 
in a trance and stood looking at her and twisting 
my fingers in desperation. I had had enough 
excitement for one day. I knew she would hate 
to waken and find herself in a hotel with a doc¬ 
tor and a nurse, but I came to the conclusion it 
was the best thing I could do for her. Get a 
doctor. Yes . . . and yet I hesitated. I 
had given a false name downstairs and said she 
was my wife. Abus would certainly deny that 
vigorously as soon as her consciousness returned. 
I cursed myself for a fool, but what good did 
that do? It had seemed the best thing to do at 
the moment ... I was nearly distracted. 
Supposing she died! 

She was so straight and still: I could not see 
that she breathed. I leaned my head against 
her breast to listen if I could hear her heart 
beat. I could; that was all right; she wasn’t 
dead at least. My eyes filled with tears at the 
thought and though I knew she could not pos¬ 
sibly hear me I said: “Abus, my darling . . . 

I love you and would not harm you for all the 
world!” 

I was startled to see her mouth move and in¬ 
vite me. There could be no harm in kissing 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


113 

her, even if all her mind was not behind that in¬ 
vitation: surely it was because we were of one 
flesh and indivisible. We were alone and she 
would never know . . . yes, of course I 

should tell her afterwards. Ellicot’s words “I 
know I oughtn’t to take her” rang in my mind, 
but I could not help putting my mouth on hers. 
I do not know how long we remained like that 
but I realized soon that I must have a doctor 
sent for, and at once. I tiptoed toward the 
door, for there was no bell that I could find. 
As I did so I heard her speak my name quite dis¬ 
tinctly, and her mouth moved as if she were try¬ 
ing to speak. 

I went back to her bedside and she began to 
speak in a low, pleading voice, passionately, but 
without a trace of change of expression in her 
face. I could not help thinking of the Oracle of 
Delphi. I listened spellbound. Was it to me 
she was speaking? She certainly called me by 
name. I bent over her, searching for some sign 
of returning consciousness. While she was 
speaking like this I could not think of the pres¬ 
ence of a provincial Australian doctor who 
would probably know no more than to order an 
aperient and a complete rest. That was un¬ 
thinkable. And Abus was saying love words 
which at first I had desired to hear her say in 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


114 

sport and now longed to hear in very earnest, for 
my whole heart had gone out to her without 
reserve. 

“When my beloved is with me, do I not know? 
Can I refuse him, even if he refuseth me? Are 
my eyes for other men, or for jewels or play¬ 
things when he is near? What profit hath she 
in red lips and soft breasts if they be not the 
fruits of love meet to be offered for him as a 
banquet? I am his and my life is in him. He 
is mine and his life is in me. He abased him¬ 
self and kissed my foot, setting a spark to the base 
of the pyre which burned the dead life that was 
mine until that moment. Wine maketh men 
drunken, aye, even the king, but thine eyes are 
stronger than wine, Joseph, for with joy almost I 
abandon the body when they touch mine. 
Thinkest thou that I can forget that I was held 
in thy arms for one brief moment? An hundred 
white doves I gave to Isis for thy kiss in grati¬ 
tude and a fine ram to Horus. But they aban¬ 
doned me and gave me no help. Heaven and 
earth may pass, yet will I love thee.” 

Suddenly her brow contracted and her lips 
pursed as if by pain. Her lips moved inarticu¬ 
lately for several minutes, but at last her words 
were dimly audible and her features regained 
their impassivity. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


US 

. . married! . . . mated , . . 

given . . . sold like vessels of pottery 

and gold and silk and myrrh and nard: am 
I like these, matter for merchandising? And 
shall the prostitution of my poor body in dishon¬ 
ourable wedlock seal treaties and give nations 
peace, commanding the fate of thousands! That 
old man, great in the Council chamber and be¬ 
loved of Pharaoh, have I hardly seen. My talis¬ 
man protects me and he seeth me not when he 
looks at me. I, that was the fine flower of my 
father’s garden, and beloved of the Queen, my 
mother, am forgotten among the tiring women 
of harlots. Beloved, despise me not . . . 

he will never see me and presently I will con¬ 
trive that he thinks me dead. If thou love me 
not, I shall die in very truth. 

“Then will I come to thee, secretly, and a 
slave shall lie in my tomb. He will never know. 
He delighteth in Astartoth, the harlot, his chief 
concubine, for she procureth for him young vir¬ 
gins, stolen from their mothers in the desert or 
brought from over the sea. He is the son of 
Ahriman, whom your people call Beel-ze-bub, 
a prince of devils. 

“Pardon . . . Mercy, my Beloved! I 

knew not what I said and I was terrified when 


n6 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


Astartoth saw me and the bed whereon I had 
wept. She said ‘A man hath been here.—Is that 
not part of his raiment? We shall know to-day 
if thou shalt see Ra rise to-morrow or not!’ 

“My Beloved, do not despise me quite 
. . . she is so big and I am afraid of her. 

I could say nothing, but I breathed thy name 
softly to give me comfort, not for her to hear. 

“ ‘Ha, the Hebrew slave again, he that se- 
duceth his master’s wives and bribes his officers 
with his favours!’ cried Astartoth in her tri¬ 
umph. And it was my tiring maid, the sweet 
Judith from Ecbatana, whom Astartoth after¬ 
ward slew with her own hands because she knew 
how Joseph had scorned her; she it was who 
accused thee to my Lord when he came in by 
the door, in trying to save my honour. Yet was 
my tongue tied by fear and my mouth would 
make no sound though I tried ... I tried, 
Beloved! And that sin of silence will never 
pass away until . . . until . . 

Two tears burst from Abus’s closed eyes and 
remained in her lashes. They rolled down her 
cheek while I was fumbling for my handker¬ 
chief. 

Abus said no more, and I sat down, be¬ 
wildered by what I had heard. Ellicot’s joke 
about Abus being Potiphar’s wife came back to 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ii 7 

me with the authority of a fulfilled prophecy, 
but it was not to me she was speaking. It must 
be that the accident of my name had stirred the 
sediment of that ancient passion in her soul. 
Her whole manner indicated that she was living 
through something over again in which I had no 
part whatever. She was utterly unconscious of 
my existence. I was not Joseph: that was too 
preposterous. I must not lose my head. I 
pinched myself hard to assure myself that the 
whole fantastic incident was not a dream. And 
Abus lay silent and still as a picture painted on 
a wall. 

But she could not lie there for ever. I must 
make up my mind and do something definite and 
at once. A third-rate Australian hotel could 
not become the scene of a new Sleeping Beauty, 
translated into the twentieth century, and 
again the idea of calling for medical assistance 
presented itself and I recoiled from it with in¬ 
creased apprehension. What if she should be¬ 
gin to talk familiarly of Potiphar and Pharaoh 
before him! Would he not pronounce her a 
raving lunatic and have her locked up at once? 
Perhaps she was. I knew nothing about lunacy, 
but I had heard that lunatics often seem per¬ 
fectly natural and responsible on most subjects 
while on certain others they may be absolutely 


118 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

abnormal. With myself I could discuss her 
sanity with great calm and show of justice, 
knowing very well which side would win, but at 
the same time I knew that I should, without a 
pang, wring the neck of any local pill-slinger 
if he should dare to say anything like the re¬ 
verse. I would not send for a doctor, not until 
it was absolutely necessary, until it was very 
clear she would not come round naturally 
. . . unless, of course, there were new, alarm¬ 

ing symptoms. 

Suddenly Abus began to speak again, in a 
much more animated way, and her face ap¬ 
peared to be somewhat changed. She had more 
colour and was less like a statue, softer . . . 

more like her own self. 

“Llewellyn, you would not wish me to ask 
again, and you, Agnes, wash your face and hands 
and clean your nails: it is near to tea-time.” 

And she sat up. She was apparently none the 
worse for her experience; it was superfluous to 
ask after her health. She was as alert as ever 
she had been, with no more trace of weakness 
than was natural to any one after a tiring after¬ 
noon. 

Her brow clouded as she looked around. 

“To where have you brought me, Joseph?” 
she said, slipping off the bed and walking 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


119 

straight to the dressing table. “This is a ho¬ 
tel.” And she burst into tears. “What for did 
you break your promise not to bring me in a 
hotel . . . like a bad woman? What have 

you done to me that I find myself on your bed in 
a hotel? Have you . . . ?” 

I told her all that had happened until I had 
laid her on the bed. I couldn’t make up my 
mind to tell her what she had said during her 
trance, for though she showed it so little, she 
had been at least semi-unconscious for fully half 
an hour and there was quite enough excitement 
for her frail little body in her present situation 
without confusing her with the vagaries of her 
subconscious mind. 

“And when you laid me here, you did not, 
after, touch me at all?” 

I hesitated because I had kissed her and did 
not wish to add to my indiscretions by denying it 
or admitting it. She came close to me and 
gazed up into my face with fearful disdain. 

“If you have . t . harmed me, Joseph, I 
will kill you, or my husband shall kill you. You 
shall surely die, if you have done wrong to me.” 

I blushed hotly with rage as much as shame. 
I think I came near fainting myself. One part 
of me adored her and another side of me ob¬ 
served, coolly, “This comes of messing about 


120 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


with the lower classes: their traditions are not 
the same as ours and in emergency they speak a 
language we do not understand.” A lady would 
have glanced at me once and known very well 
that I could not have been capable of taking 
advantage of her to ... to “Kiss her, for 
example,” whispered a distinctly upper-class 
demon. “There is only one course open for a 
gentleman,” said another. “Walk straight out 
of the room, in a dignified manner; bow to her 
slightly from the door and clear out.” In a far- 
off recess of my mind I heard two other demons 
talking: “Well, why doesn’t he ... ? Any- 

body’d think he’d never had anything to do with 
women in his life!” 

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t grab her 
by the hair,” said the other fiend with profound 
contempt, “and let her know what hotels are 
for.” 

“If he doesn’t, I’d clear out, if it was me and 
. . . let her get out of it the best way she 

could!” A low-class devil, that last. 

Strange what baseness will flit through the 
human mind in a moment of emotion or 
emergency. No wonder the ancients believed 
so firmly in the temptation of personal devils; 
you can almost hear them speak, and feel them 
pull you to action. Yet did they ever consider 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


121 


that the voice of God and the voices of devils 
came from the same quarter, within? 

My sense of humour came to the rescue, as it 
generally does for all of us lucky ones who have 
it. I saw Abus tempted by another demon, not 
less abominable than my own. Hers was dis¬ 
guised as a conventional angel, a grotesque fig¬ 
ure, something like an artist’s lay figure, but 
alive. Its wings were moulted, its crown of 
gold awry, its halo bent and its finger and toe 
nails crooked and in deep mourning from grub¬ 
bing in the dirt. Across the bosom of its 
grubby white robes was a cheap satin ribbon 
upon which, in shiny gilt letters, was written its 
name “Purity.” Therefore I did, after less de¬ 
liberation than the account of it would suggest, 
what I knew in my heart Abus wanted me to do. 
It was not her fault that half the human race 
has been poisoned with a false attitude of mind 
with regard to sex. I told her, in her own 
phraseology, as well as I could, that my heart 
was too pure to ruin or betray her, and that I 
would put my right hand into the fire and might 
I die where I stood if I would wrong or harm her 
. . . especially when she was asleep! I felt 

that my protestations were cramped, unreal, and 
deformed. To my ears they sounded ridiculous 
and I could hardly keep my face in the proper 


122 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


mould of severity required for talking on such 
subjects, but Abus was entirely serious. She 
was standing before me, looking up eagerly into 
my face while I made that noble speech. Then 
she put both her little white hands on her heart 
and said earnestly: 

“I felt here, all the time, that you are good, 
and I never really believed you would do any¬ 
thing base, but there is something else in me also 
which made me ask you and make you answer. 
Forgive me, my real self was sure you had done 
nothing to me.” 

“But I did, Abus, I couldn’t help it, I kissed 
you . . . because I love you so!” 

“And you shall kiss me again, Joseph, now 
. . . That’s enough ... I meant only 

once, Joseph ... let me go!” 




CHAPTER VIII 


^US went to bed early that evening, and 



Ijl although I felt weary and was preparing 
to do likewise, a very different evening was be¬ 
fore me. The boat usually starts for Adelaide 
at about 3 P.M. It was fortunate for us that 
it was delayed, for otherwise Abus and I would 
have been left behind in Perth. I got her home, 
however, before dark and in time for supper. 
I did not see her again afterward. 

Ellicot and I walked round the deck after 
supper and I became aware that all was not well 
with him. We went to the extreme end of the 
bow to watch the phosphorescent spray as we cut 
the water in the moonlight. We went plough¬ 
ing away from Freemantle at the tdp speed of 
eighteen odd knots an hour because we were late 
and the sight was altogether glorious. 

“Our ship,** said Ellicot, “is propelled by 
three screws; the two outer ones are operated 
by triple expansion reciprocating engines and 
the one in the middle by a low-pressure turbine. 
At fifteen knots the engines run at seventy-six 


123 




EGYPTIAN LOVE 


124 

revolutions to the minute but the turbine does 
two hundred! What I don’t understand is why 
they call it a low-pressure turbine if it runs so 
much faster than the triple expansion recipro¬ 
cating affairs.” 

“And that sort of thing does not usually ex¬ 
cite a classical scholar’s curiosity unless there is 
something the matter with him. Suppose you 
get to the point.” 

“Pye,” he said, squeezing my arm a little as 
we strolled off again, “you are right, of course, 
and I will make no bones about it. I’ve had a 
damn rotten day. Beppina had a row with me 
about an hour before we went ashore. I have 
no idea what the row was about: it was just one 
of those feminine rows which materialize out of 
thin air and last just long enough for them to do 
something else. And then they collect you on 
the return journey.” 

“Explain.” 

“Well . . . fact is '. . . I’m mad 

about Bepp, and she has not been obdurate, not 
at all. I took my second-class cabin the day 
after I knew her and it has been worth it—worth 
all of it. On the other hand, I suspect that 
Bepp never intended to go ashore with me to¬ 
day at all. Anyhow she didn’t, and I suspect 
her of going ashore with Hans, that’s the big 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


125 

German butcher who’s generally loafing about 
the bar . . . and that is not a pleasant 

thought for a man who prefers to have a cold 
bath every morning.” 

“Continue explaining.” 

“Bepp came back to the ship at about five, 
not with Hans, but within three minutes of him, 
and I happen to know that Hans went on duty 
after that hour. Then she came to me and 
asked me if I had forgiven her yet and would be 
nice to her again as I used to be before I was 
so horrid, and so forth. She knotted her fin¬ 
ger in the front of my shirt and said ‘Ti voglio 
bene, sai?’ and was all dimples and poutings and 
perfectly adorable to look at, but I felt like 
wringing her blasted little neck! Then, to di¬ 
vert me, she told me that you and Abus had spent 
the afternoon in the bridal suite of the Hotel 
Wallaby, somewhere near the museum, and the 
bell-hop told her you were Mr. Higgs and that 
your wife had to be put to bed at once because 
she was ill. She said she knew that you didn’t 
have a doctor and of course she didn’t know 
what you did to her to make her well, but that 
you obviously did her good because Abus looked 
so blooming at supper. ’Course, I’m glad you 
had a nice time and all that, but how did Bep- 
pina happen to be cavorting around the Hotel 


126 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

Wallaby? It is in my mind that she didn’t go 
there to purchase an ice cream nor to peruse 
the financial papers. And then, somehow 
. . . though I don’t care much about fidelity 

. . . long-distance fidelity, I did expect that 

I would be enough for her on this voyage. And 
then . . . Hans! It does make me feel 

rather sick; she might have chosen someone else 
to deceive me with if she was going to! Why 
do women who look like a Ghirlandajo Madon¬ 
na always fall for large, meaty, breathy, oily 
Germans with sandy hair on their knuckles!” 

I swallowed my wrath at his interpretation of 
my afternoon’s diversion. Of course it was not 
his fault that he thought as he did. A week 
earlier my own vision of the stop at Freemantle 
had not been very different, and there was time 
enough to discuss that if ever I decided to do so. 
For the moment I felt it my duty to comfort 
Ellicot, though I could not help wishing luck 
to the worthy Hans, butcher-in-chief to the 
R. M. S. Orama. It seemed to me to be a happy 
solution of the affair from a practical point of 
view. We paced the deck together, as we used 
to walk the Trumpington or Grantchester Road 
at Cambridge when there were matters of mo¬ 
ment to consider. Ellicot talked a great deal of 
nonsense about interviewing the butcher and in- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 127 

terlarded his childish talk with quotations from 
Ovid and Propertius. Misery makes children 

of us all. 

When he had talked himself out he felt better, 
by a good deal. Then he sighed and repeated 
that verse of “The Garden of Proserpine,” the 
eleventh, I think it is, which he knew I loved: 

“From too much love of living, 

From hope and fear set free, 

We thank with brief thanksgiving 
Whatever gods there be, 

That no life lives for ever; 

That dead men rise up never; 

And even the weariest river 
Winds somewhere safe to sea.” 

It has always seemed to me that it is a pity 
Swinburne did not die with that verse on his 
lips, but he evidently did not feel it in that way, 
for it is not even the last verse of the poem. 

“Well, Pye, tell me about your deadly sin or 
miraculous cure at the Hotel Wallaby.” 

The effort to be facetious was apparent. He 
was in a serious mood, but trying to lighten the 
atmosphere for me after subjecting me to a long 
screed of woe. 

“With regard to that, Ethel, the afternoon 
was not exactly what it may have appeared to 


128 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


be. Your informant was mistaken, though it is 
true we spent a portion of the afternoon in the 
Hotel Wallaby. If I tell you anything about 
it at all, you must give me your word to keep it 
to yourself, first, of course, and second, to ab¬ 
stain from treating the matter lightly should you 
be tempted to do so, for what began as easily as 
a flirtation with a Cambridge barmaid shows 
evidence of finishing rather seriously for me. 
I’m in love . . . no, I love Abus. I love 

her as, a week ago, I did not believe possible, but 
she is married and although she is not happy 
with her husband, I see very little chance of get¬ 
ting her out of his clutches.” 

“You mean ... to marry her?” said El- 
licot with arched eyebrows. 

“I shall never have that luck, but, of course, 
that is just what I mean.” 

“Go on—it’s your turn to explain.” 

I told him therefore the outlines of all that 
had passed between us during the afternoon, to 
which he listened earnestly and with all the 
respect of which he was capable; respect for 
anything was not Ellicot’s strong point at this 
period of his history. It used to be said of him 
in Cambridge that he “feared not God, neither 
did he regard man.” He was deeply interested 
to her of her recognizing the priest of Ptah in 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


129 

the Gallery, but I could feel him rebel intel¬ 
lectually when I told him of what she said in 
her trance. 

“Twelve hundred B. C. did you say? That’s 
just before history begins, really. Greece, for 
example, didn’t exist; Cnossos had been sacked 
but not utterly destroyed yet: I wonder if the 
Colossus at Rhodes was standing, if it ever stood 
at all. . . . You are sure, I suppose, that 

you never mentioned anything about Potiphar’s 
wife—after I suggested it, I mean—that might 
have influenced her subconscious mind? Of 
course she might have got it out of your mind 
without actual words in some inscrutable way. 
Nobody knows very much about mental telepa¬ 
thy anyhow, but to my mind a hypothesis like 
that is just as difficult to believe as the reincar¬ 
nation dope.” 

Ellicot agreed with me that it had probably 
been the accident of my name which had en¬ 
abled me to draw so much out of her, “but, my 
hat . . . when it comes to being locked up 

in a perfectly good bedroom with a girl you are 
in love with . . . well, I know I couldn’t!” 

“I was careful to correct myself, if you re¬ 
member. I said I loved her, not that I was in 
love with her.” 

“Well, that’s all the same.” 


130 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“Not at all. There is a very big difference 
indeed, as you will discover some day, when it 
happens to you. Being in love is largely a 
physical condition provoked by a woman who 
is sympathetic to you, and it refers principally 
to the physical and animal magnetic side of 
one’s being. I was in love with Abus, and 
desired her bitterly ... in a sense I am 
still ... do, but love has swamped that 
to such a degree that for the moment it is in 
abeyance to something much bigger and better, 
and I am not wildly interested in it. The greater 
includes the less though, the greater could never 
be complete without it any more than, on the 
physical side, a man can be considered complete 
with only one lung. Being in love demands a 
woman who is exciting to the senses, who is 
probably pretty, whose eyes and hair and flesh 
happen to appeal to one, whose kiss stimulates 
us for one purpose and of whom the primitive 
male tires, and may even have a feeling of re¬ 
pulsion for, when that purpose is fulfilled. 

“You mean, when he’s . . . yes, I see.” 

“That is not the whole of love.” 

“It’s a pretty good substitute!” 

“Temporarily, yes, as a toy pistol is tempo¬ 
rarily a good substitute for a real gun, but it 
doesn’t do the same thing.” 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


131 

“Well, what’s . . . ?” 

“Being in love means that something suffi¬ 
ciently incomprehensible has happened inside 
of oneself which demands another chosen human 
being . . . and the choice of that one may 

lead to love, while it is not love, in a true sense 
at all. It is a part of love, expressed in terms of 
matter: the real thing is as different from being 
in love as the personality of a man is different 
from his lungs or his liver. Nobody knows 
what it is.” 

“What do you think it is?” 

“I think ... I don’t quite know what I 
think, but I feel that love is something too big 
to originate in oneself at all. I think of it as 
power outside ourselves with which we can oc¬ 
casionally come weakly in contact through 
intense desire for service, self-abnegation, and 
discipline. We arrive at it first in human life 
through another being who is able to supply 
what we lack and who has need of exactly what 
we can supply. I feel that most of the world- 
confusion is due to the fact that people cannot 
understand even as little as this of love. 
We confuse the issue with simple primi¬ 
tive needs that are on the same level with eating 
and breathing—necessary indeed, but only as a 
means to an end. I feel that a complete love be- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


132 

tween a man and a woman is the first step in the 
direction of cosmic consciousness. What we 
call public morality is the well-meant result of 
this confusion, due to misunderstanding all this: 
it is not only a vague attempt to regulate society 
in regard to the process of reproduction and 
the protection of private property, which is 
all it effectually is, but a blind desire toward 
unity with the Divine. That is why it is differ¬ 
ent in every age and quite different among dif¬ 
ferent races. Perhaps I am incoherent, but I 
dare say you get my drift.” 

“Drift . . . driftwood. . . . All of 

us are . . .” said Ellicot, thoughtfully. 

“ ‘Alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, 
wide sea! 7 Perhaps that’s a reason why one 
ought not to ‘Sport with Amaryllis in the shade,’ 
lightly . . . not because it’s sin, as the 

Churches think, or because it’s dangerous to 
health, as the doctors warn, or distracting from 
occupations . . . Work, with a capital let¬ 

ter, the only god we truly serve because he is the 
only one who answers us . . , but just be¬ 
cause it retards . . . reduces one’s chance 

of getting . . . reaching . . 

“Reaching up to touch God?” 

“Yes, that’s possible. ‘God is Love.’ . . . 

‘God Bless our Home,’ over the mantelpiece 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 133 

. . . that’s a reasonable interpretation of 

something that has always seemed a pretty vague 
proposition in my mind. I believe you’ve got 
hold of something, James. I’ve seen women 
myself sometimes . . . women that are per¬ 

fect peaches and awfully nice, frank, open, 
without any kind of fence or rampart of unap¬ 
proachable feminine divinity and that sort of 
rot, that I’ve liked awfully and yet I . . . 

nobody would ever mistake them for the other 
sort, if you know what I mean. I hate women 
who appeal to my better nature, obviously, but 
I suppose that’s about the size of it: they don’t 
seem to make any other appeal at all. 

“This wasn’t meant to be a moral lecture to 
wean you from your wicked ways, Ethel, but 
you asked me what I thought. I am perfectly 
serious about it, too, but I wouldn’t like to think 
that being serious was a matter for common 
gravity, for a long face and no sense of humour, 
or prevented one from having a perfectly good 
party once in a while. The oftener the better, 
in fact. I’m by no means sure that the serious 
man who ‘sublimates his passions to nobler uses’ 
and denies himself everything shows any signs 
of being any nobler than lots of others who think 
a nice girl helps a party quite a lot. It’s like 
the men who are so fond of themselves because 


i 3 4 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

they don’t drink and feed up on chocolates and 
ice cream like an intemperate schoolgirl. They 
don’t die of delirium tremens at sixty, they die 
of diabetes at forty-five. If the fine work of the 
world had always been done by the virtuous 
people alone, there would be a complete case 
to go to the jury, but since most of the finest 
work in almost every direction, of which the 
world is proud, has been done by the roguey- 
poguey, it isn’t surprising that the jury cannot 
agree. 

“At the same time, while the great are often 
non-moral, promiscuous gratification of the 
senses isn’t the way to be great or the Hall of 
Fame would be cluttered with human refuse 
from the movie super to the squalid-minded mil¬ 
lionaire.” 

“Are those the two opposite poles in your 
mind, James?” 

“No, but they are things which are about 
equal to the same thing, James, and if you were 
a mathematician you would already suspect the 
truth about them, that they are . . .” 

“Equal to one another, yes, I got that far.” 

We wandered all over the ship that night. It 
was the first time I had done so, though Ellicot 
had found his way into every nook and corner 
long ago. He knew his way upon every deck 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


*35 

and was greeted with a smile from every sleepy 
sailor he met. He was known as well to them 
as to the maids and stewardesses who were apt 
to blush as well as smile when they met him. 
That he was “a cure, a regular case and no mis¬ 
take” was the popular verdict. 

At last we found ourselves at the door of the 
second-class kitchen where I had a friend in the 
daytime. Properly speaking, he was a friend 
of Billy’s, but I had purchased an interest in me 
with silver that expressed itself in surreptitious 
extra pie once in a while. Oddly enough there 
was still a light in the kitchen though the night 
was far spent. The hot smell of things peeled 
and soup stock, delicately flavoured with old 
rope, tar barrels, and things of the sea never 
entirely passes away from that part of the ship. 
The wooden tables, at which the deck hands 
dine, were still damp from the vigorous rub 
down with sea water which effaced the stain of 
every meal, and there were a couple of men at 
the far end beneath a dim electric light covered 
with a galvanized wire cage. One was a stout 
figure in decollete underwear and a square white 
cap proclaiming him a culinary artist, and the 
other, in a striped sweater, holding a tin coffee 
pot in his scarlet hand and leaning heavily on 
the table with the other, was my friend. As we 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


136 

approached he wheeled his head without raising 
his hand from the table. The coffee pot jerked 
a large brown splash on the deck. 

He invited us graciously. “ ’Ave a drop o’ 
cawfee?” 

We assented and prepared to follow him into 
the kitchen to get cups for ourselves. The cook 
humped himself forward upon the table with 
his face in his arms and did not move. 

“Thet pore ol’ beggar,” said our friend Tom, 
“ ’e’s got it in the neck all right. ’Is Jane gone 
bad on ’im, an’ only been married little more’n 
a year. ’Ad ’er first baby about two trips ago. 
More sugar? . . . ’Ere’s the bag . . . put 
it in yer pocket . . . come in ’andy . . . 
well’s I was saying . . . the baby didn’t look 
like ’im much . . . black ’air, and ’e’s a 

bloody blonde. Wife ain’t so dark neether. ’E 
got a letter at Columbo. She put the baby in a 
Orphan Asylium, pretending it wasn’t ’ers, see? 
And gone orf with a taxicab driver, ’n ’e don’t 
know where she is, nor the baby eether. ’E 
ain’t pleased about it. Cries away like that 
most o’ the time. Funny, ain’t it? ’Cos ’e used 
to knock ’er about quite a bit when ’e was ’ome. 
And nobody didn’t thought ’e cared much about 
’er. She says in ’er letter she liked Bob all 
right, but now she found ’er ’Enery she knows 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


137 

what love is and ’e ain’t never raised ’is ’and to 
’er all the time they was livin’ together in sin. 
I don’t blame ’er one way, but of course, she was 
’is wife, so ’e could do wot ’e liked with ’er.” 

Bob raised his head ponderously, revealing a 
swollen, tear-soaked countenance. 

“An’ I always said my prayers at yore knee, 
Jesus’n all!” he observed sadly. 

“He said his prayers at his wife’s knee!” 
asked Ellicot, with doubt in his heart. 

“Oh,” said Tom, “ ’e’s blowing about ’is 
mother now ’cause ’e’s full o’ beer. ’E always 
blows about ’is mother when ’e’s drunk. Funny, 
ain’t it? ’Is mother as ’as bin dead these twenty 
years, but it’s’s wife ’e’s full about. I’m sorry 
for Bob: ’e’s got it in the neck . . . ’ere, 

pal, ’ave . . . ’ave a drop o’ cawfee!” 





CHAPTER IX 

F ROM Adelaide to Melbourne is only a day’s 
sail, and from Melbourne to Sydney, not 
more than two more, and the time passed very 
quickly. Those who are going ashore have 
many preparations to make and those who are 
going on to Brisbane, having no preparations, 
are in everybody’s way. The voyage is really 
over for the Sydney passengers at Melbourne 
and things which have got distributed have to 
be collected: the heavy luggage is in the hold, 
of course, but soon the hatches are opened and 
the derrick begins to fish them out of the deep 
and deposit them on the deck, roped, battered, 
bulging, or broken. The hand luggage will no 
longer contain what came out of it. Purchases 
have been made, of which some are already tired 
while others are increasingly proud of theirs. 

Port Said and Columbo, with their marvels, 
are very far and the first glimpse of Australian 
shops betrays that here dwells a young people, 
up-to-date, and demanding the best, or the best 
possible imitation of it, in every household requi- 
138 








EGYPTIAN LOVE 


i39 

site, but limited to such a degree that it has no 
conception of what the best may be of any¬ 
thing outside its narrow home circle. The Eng¬ 
lish stranger is shocked at the accent with which 
the mother tongue is spoken. What he has been 
wont to consider the hallmark of the uneducated 
in speech, he finds in the mouth of some of the 
most highly educated men, and he has great 
difficulty in adapting his mind to accept it. 
There is little doubt, too, that however loyal the 
Australians may be, they cordially dislike the 
arrival of recruits from their beloved home- 
shores. The visitors, on the other hand, are 
very prone to begin at once the reformation of 
the Australian native from the very first mo¬ 
ment, and they do not pursue the good work 
very long before somebody gives them a black 
eye, metaphorically or actually. 

The average steerage passenger is very glad 
to get back to a land where his own language is 
spoken at all and does not suffer from the refine¬ 
ment of accent. They speak as he speaks and 
he feels more at home than the Australian is 
willing to let him. I fancy something of the 
beauty of the slight glimpse they have had of 
the Orient lingers in the mind of the humblest 
emigrants. Things were “rummy” enough in 
those “furrin’ parts,” and though the simple 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


140 

soul of them is offended by anything which is 
different from their own habit and custom, they 
feel a certain pride at having experienced it. 
The ever-enduring message of beauty which the 
East leaves in the mind has made its imprint on 
their minds, though they are hardly aware of it. 
The print is faint enough, but sufficiently 
marked to differentiate them from people at 
home, if the comparison could be made. They 
have travelled, and perforce gained something 
from it, the first step in the subtle process of 
making a colonial citizen and perhaps the germ 
of a new species in the human family. For 
some it has really broadened the mind while for 
others it may have merely elongated the conver¬ 
sation, which was, God knows, sufficiently at¬ 
tenuated already. But for all it has been a 
healthful change, a stirring up of the individual 
selves of all of us from the various routines of 
our existences at home. 

With me and Ellicot the voyage started as an 
amusing escapade. For him it had gone no 
farther: he had found a playmate, differing only 
in kind from others he had found in the past. 
The first faint signs of an end to his amour had 
come in the form of suspicion: secretly I felt 
glad to think that it would probably end, with 
the luck of a libertine, in nothing. Had it been 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


141 

a case of a timorous, good young man, tempted 
into indiscretion for the first time and failing to 
maintain his highest ideal, there would, I felt, 
be every likelihood of a suicide, a murder, or, at 
least, considerable unpleasantness. But he was 
not that sort of young man. Presently it became 
more and more evident that his suspicions were 
fully justified and that the large Teuton butcher, 
coarse, heavy, pink, and sandy-haired, was going 
to win out over mere cultivated manners and 
brilliant intellectuality. Beppina was one of 
those who prefer quantity to quality and was 
simple enough to know it. She was beginning 
to weary of the intellectual demand which Elli- 
cot’s presence made upon her, albeit he seemed, 
to me, to adapt himself so skilfully to her that 
he became almost her equal when they were to¬ 
gether. Hans made no demands, consciously or 
unconsciously, upon her mental side: he was 
all animal, just as she was, and as Ellicot ob¬ 
served afterward, whimsically but not without 
some bitterness, if anybody was going to be 
ruined by the episode it would be he. “And 
now she’s going to ruin Hans: she really ought 
to be put in a little bottle, James, and safe under 
sealing-wax!” 

For me the voyage had brought something so 
different that I seemed to tread a new world, 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


142 

into which Ellicot could only spy, as through a 
window. Something in Abus stirred and probed 
till the foundations of my being were moved. 
My brain seemed to echo what she had to tell 
me of her last incarnation, parrot-wise. The 
memories were hers, not mine, yet I seemed to 
be able to share them. I could not originate 
anything, but when she expressed them they 
seemed to have been on the tip of my tongue. I 
was certainly in love with her, but she intrigued 
and exercised me mentally so much that desire 
for her was swamped by my feverish specula¬ 
tions about her remote past. 

I alternated between doubt and faith in her 
stories, almost hoping that some day a reason¬ 
able interpretation of everything would turn 
up to explain them. On the other hand, I also 
felt, deep down, that this was the one occasion in 
a million when no amount of rational interpreta¬ 
tion would shake my faith. One thing stuck, 
like a splinter, in my mind which Ellicot had 
said in the early days. He said: “You know the 
Welsh are awful liars. Nobody worse that way 
unless it is the Manx. All the Celtic peoples 
regard the truth with a certain modesty; Irish, 
Welsh, and Manx, especially, think it more 
decent clothed in decorative parable than just 
naked. They can’t help it. The Irish lie to 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


i 43 

make a good story, something you will be pleased 
to hear. The Welsh invariably lie if it serves 
their turn in the faintest degree. But the Manx, 
James, are something special and peculiar 
among mortals: theirs is a congenital disap¬ 
proval of repeating accurately anything that has 
happened. The truth is odious to them. They 
lie for the sake of lying, even against their own 
interest!” This, I repeat, stuck in my mind and 
caused me a little uneasiness every time I thought 
of it. 

As I was ruminating upon this subject, Elli- 
cot happened to come along and plump himself 
down in the chair I had prepared for Abus. 
There was a look in his face which warned me 
not to talk of anything serious. The odd expres¬ 
sion in his eyes told me plainly that he would not 
do anything anybody expected him to do. Not 
being able to ask him to go away until Abus 
appeared, at least, I started on the subject of the 
Manxmen. 

“How do you come to know anything about 
the Isle of Man?” I asked. “I know nothing 
about it besides the fact that the cats there have 
no tails, and I thought that was as much as any 
Englishman knew about the Island.” 

“I was at school there—King William’s Col¬ 
lege. The pure-bred Manx cats are getting 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


144 

pretty rare now. They nearly all have a stump 
of a tail, but the pure-bred ought to have none. 
It is said they abandoned the use of their caudal 
appendages through shame, to show that though, 
being Manx, they must needs be liars, they were 
at least not tail-bearers also. Shall I recite a 
noble poem on that subject?” 

“James, I thank you, but if you feel like recita¬ 
tion, I would prefer to hear a noble poem about 
Joseph and Zuleikha, which you promised to 
tell me about some day.” 

It slipped out unawares and I thought of 
course he would refuse, in that mood, and drool 
on into one of his long spells of nonsense which 
bore me so terribly, but as happy chance would 
have it, he took my hint at once. He had noth¬ 
ing to do and the name of the poem started his 
thought in a congenial direction. 

“Shall I tell you how the Sword of the Beauty 
of Joseph appeared to the most beautiful of all 
virgins, Zuleikha, in the sheath of a dream?” 
he said, absently. 

“I ... I wish you would . . .” 

“I once thought of starting Persian to be able 
to read the poem in Jami’s original, but I didn’t 
get far with that idea. I read it in Roger’s 
translation, which I don’t happen to like, ex¬ 
cellent as I believe it is. Some of it is interest- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


i 4 S 

ing, but there should be a union to protect poets 
and poetry against the amateur verse-maker. 
Why should a man burst into verse because he 
happens to be able to translate from a foreign 
language? It is always so much better to get 
the text explained than put into rhymed and 
metred form. But some of it is interesting. 
Listen: 

‘Behold the tulip in the time of Spring, 

How sweet upon the hills ’tis blossoming, 

It splits its flower from underneath a stone, 
And in this manner makes its beauty known. 
Beauty that loves her body to adorn, 

Blushes not long when her disguise be torn, 
She will not weep for shackles rent apart; 
True Modesty is sweetness of the heart. 

Oh, moist fresh tulip from thy bed arise, 
How long shall sleep seal up thy golden eyes? 
Zuleikha, Zuleikha, from thy bed 
Rise up, awake, ’tis morning—lift thy head, 
And from the winding-sheet of Yama raise 
Thy face, as beautiful as April days. 

Turn thou for us the night of dole to morn, 
And with a smile now consecrate the Dawn.’ 

“You said she was fat and forty, I remember, 
James, I don’t know how you knew it—even the 
Bible does not say anything about that. She 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


146 

was the daughter of Taimoiis, King of Africa, 
according to Jami, and when she first saw Joseph 
in a dream she was only seven years old. She 
had three dreams of seeing him, very lovely 
dreams, which he describes, and as she grew 
older she could not think of any one else because 
Joseph was so beautiful. 

Tn beauty none with Joseph could compare, 
He that is very perfect do men say, 

Is like another Joseph, to this day, 

And of all lovers none was like to her; 

In passion or in faith. Zuleikha, 

From childhood till the age of love she grew, 
Filled with her passion as a flower with dew, 
Both when she ruled, and in the purple sat, 
And when the bread of beggary she ate. 

After old age and poverty and pain, 

For her the time of youth came back again, 
Faith and love’s road she knew and none be¬ 
side, 

Born and bred up in it until she died.’ 

“Doesn’t sound much like your idea of Poti- 
phar’s naughty wife, does it?” 

“No, that’s admitted, and the verses don’t 
sound so out-of-the-way bad to me, either.” 

“James, I will not hide the truth from you, I 
wrote ’em myself, or rather, I wrote a good deal 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


i 47 

of them because I disliked the English transla¬ 
tion so much. I wish I could read Riickert’s 
German translation; they say it’s superb. There 
was a part, if I can remember it—I have not 
thought of it for years—about her childhood 
and her games and sports . . . she was a 
Diana . . . how did it go? Something 
about cow-headed Hathor—Isis as the mother of 
fertility, and her clothes . . . I’m afraid 

I’ve forgotten it . . . 

‘Yet she delighted in the folds of Greece, 
And vests of Syrian silk, made in one piece, 
Sometimes she wore her Chinese broideries, 
Spangled with birds and princes and strange 
trees. 

Or clothed in robes of Egypt, oft was she, 
Woven by maids exceeding skilfully, 

And every day when fresh appeared the sun, 
Naught but a new dress ever she put on. 
Twice from one vest her head she did not lift, 
She was as white and perfect as her shift, 
That lucky silken thing alone had grace, 

To hold her body in its soft embrace, 

And from the kiss of princes she withdrew 
Her foot; her skirt alone might love her shoe. 
Perfect she was in all, except, I ween, 

That she had never loved, nor had she been 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


148 

Clasped to a lover’s heart, but sported all 

The day, and never thought of love at all.’ 

“Or words to that effect. I can’t remember 
it . . . and it’s a crime to spoil it. At the 

same time, it is a long poem and I dare say you 
would not thank me for reciting a couple of 
thousand lines, even if I could.” 

Just then I caught a glimpse of Abus coming 
upstairs from the women’s dining room. The 
evening was before us and Ellicot, calm and 
restful again, showed no inclination to move. 
I waved to her to attract her attention and a 
bright idea struck me. Could I persuade Elli¬ 
cot to tell us both the story of Joseph and Zu- 
leikha, and could I induce Abus to listen to it 
also? I told her that I wanted her to come 
over and sit with us, which she did rather re¬ 
luctantly, for she did not like Ellicot and would 
make no pretence that she did. 

It was a joy to listen to Ellicot on such oc¬ 
casions as these. He had a unique gift for 
making anything alive in which he took delight 
himself. I remember very well how he spoilt 
“Peter Pan” for me by telling me the story of 
the play in advance. He had seen it half a 
dozen times and seemed to know a great deal of 
it by heart. He loved it and he acted and de- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


H 9 

scribed and commented on it all together and 
made such a divine illusion that I was rather 
disappointed when I saw the play a few weeks 
later. I knew he could make the story of Joseph 
and Zuleikha just as living as Peter Pan and I 
was anxious to see if it would strike any chords 
of memory in Abus. 

Ellicot told us the story in words of two 
syllables which Abus could understand, explain¬ 
ing, unobviously, anything he thought she might 
not follow. He contrived to make us feel, with¬ 
out florid description, that there never lived 
anything more delicate and beautiful than Zu¬ 
leikha, and that Joseph was no less. He de¬ 
scribed the three dreams in which Zuleikha saw 
Joseph and developed the passion of her life, 
one worthy to be set with that of Abelard and 
Heloise, or Aucassin and Nicolette. He told 
her how despair changed to triumph when, in 
the third dream, Joseph told her that he was 
Wazir of Egypt. Abus’s eyes began to stare 
with astonishment at his manner of telling his 
story; it was plain she had never heard anything 
like it before. I gazed at her and listened to 
Ellicot, whose golden voice took up the burden 
of the tale. 

“When Zuleikha heard this, the rose bloomed 
again in her cheeks and for very joy she dressed 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ISO 

herself in the colours of sunrise and played 
with her silver-bodied friends in the Palace 
courtyard, with renewed zest, for who could 
refuse her, even unseen, at the request of the 
King, her father? And King Taimous made 
enquiries whether the great Wazir of Egypt 
were willing to accept his daughter who had 
dreamed a dream. Zuleikha had no doubt of the 
answer, for she knew now that Joseph loved her 
as dearly as she loved him. Had she not clearly 
read it in his eyes; the dream could have no un¬ 
favourable meaning since it made her heart 
so glad. All night long she and her brother, 
or half brother, Cophreth, insisted that none of 
their play-friends should go to their homes for 
sleep on such a night. They danced all night 
to the sound of shawms and psaltery and all 
manner of music.’’ 

“But if her brother was a priest, he should not 
have danced all the night with girls, even if they 
were his sister’s friends,” said Abus. 

Ellicot shot a swift glance at me, for he had 
not mentioned anything about Zuleikha’s brother 
being a priest; but he remembered the incident 
I had related of the museum at Perth. 

“He was too young to be a priest at this time, 
Mrs. Dunbagh. You know, Zuleikha was only 
about fourteen and her brother may have been 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


151 

younger still. Girls grow up and are married 
in the East to this day at an age when we should 
think them little more than children. Possibly 
her brother became a priest afterward, when he 
grew up. I do not know. 

“Very soon the message came back from the 
Wazir of Egypt, saying that he would accept 
Zuleikha with honour. Pa-tu-pa-ra was his 
name, which means the ‘Gift of the Sun.’ He 
was a very great man, second only to Pharaoh 
himself. He was Chief of the Eunuchs, Chief 
of the Executioners, who were Pharaoh’s royal 
bodyguard. The name of the King, or Pharaoh, 
of Egypt at this time, about three thousand years 
ago was Amenophis III. 

“Perhaps King Taimoiis did not really know 
so very much about Pa-tu-pa-ra (which is the 
Egyptian form of Potiphar, whose name Elli- 
cot was careful not to mention), but he knew he 
was the richest and most powerful prince in the 
world with whom his daughter had miraculously 
fallen in love, and in those days no one would 
have doubted that a dream such as Zuleikha had 
must be a command from God. It must have 
seemed like a fairy tale to him, for he was 
probably not a very important king compared 
with Pharaoh, who was the son. . . . (He 

was the fourteenth son, James. Margaret Sar - 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


152 

ger missed her Egyptian incarnation!) He was 
the father of the great Akhnaton—the first hu¬ 
manitarian-idealist in the history of the world. 
(“Wasn’t that the eighteenth dynasty, or was it 
the nineteenth, James?”) Egypt, in those days, 
meant practically all the world to those who 
lived nearer to it than to Babylon. It was hard 
for people to realize that there were any other 
great countries in the world then, because the 
distances were so great to people who were 
obliged to travel on foot, on horses, or on 
camels. 

“So Zuleikha was prepared for her marriage 
journey. Hundreds of horses and camels were 
loaded with all the wealth that could be ob¬ 
tained from King Taimoiis’s country. Gold, 
ivory, carpets, and frankincense, rare sweet¬ 
meats made in the King’s kitchen from the finest 
fruits, and orange flowers, dates, wine, carvings, 
and vessels of gold containing precious oint¬ 
ments, everything that a princess could have was 
showered upon her by her father, and she rode 
in a closed litter, borne on the shoulders of 
slaves who were themselves part of her dowry. 
Most probably many of her girl friends were 
sent with her, besides a hundred of the most 
beautiful girl slaves whose duty it was to wait 
upon the perfect princess. Slowly they made 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


I S 3 

their way to Egypt where another equipage, not 
unlike hers, met them by the way and escorted 
them to the house of Pa-tu-pa-ra, probably a 
gorgeous country house on the outskirts of 
Thebes.” 

“Yes,” said Abus, gazing at Ellicot in un¬ 
disguised wonder. To my imagination it seemed 
that she was not merely making an interested 
assent but that she was ratifying the truth of his 
statements. Never before had Ellicot had such 
a listener. He quoted snatches of poetry from 
all ages which might seem to be part of his 
narrative or descriptive and decorative. I could 
see that his deep sympathetic voice was not with¬ 
out its own appeal to Abus and I understood, 
somewhat jealously, that a voice like that must 
go far to make him irresistible in his love-plead¬ 
ings. It must be wonderful in the pulpit. 
Abus trembled a little at intervals, at times 
turning to me as if to say something which 
invariably died on her lips for fear of interrupt¬ 
ing the wonderful tale. She seemed to ask my 
help, perhaps protection from the gentle story 
which was eating into her very heart itself. 
The spell upon me was hardly less. The out¬ 
line that I remember is a faint echo and indica¬ 
tion of what Ellicot could do: he knew his own 
power so well. He never made a mistake in 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


154 

matter or intonation; it was a perfect work of 
art and I became helpless and fascinated like a 
humming-bird before a whip snake. He de¬ 
scribed the life of a prince in Egypt in such a 
way that it seemed as if he also had lived in 
Thebes at the time and was telling of the events 
of the last few days to a friend who had been 
away. (“Did you ever read Maspero?” he 
asked in an aside, half-smiling wickedly. “I 
thought you might be recognizing some of this 
. . . of course I don’t mean his great history 

of Egypt in seven volumes.: I haven’t read that 
myself!”) 

“It was not customary for a bride to see her 
husband before she was married, though I think 
he was permitted to have a glimpse of her in a 
mirror. He was more than satisfied if he did, 
I make no doubt, but when she peeked out 
through a cranny in her curtains during the 
marriage ceremony she fainted away without 
so much as a cry, and was unconscious until it 
was nearly over, for the husband she saw was 
an elderly, fat Egyptian with an artificial red 
beard tied on with green ribbons, and beneath 
his coronet she could plainly see that his hair 
was gray. His face too was painted all over to 
appear as youthful as possible. It was not the 
beautiful lover of her dreams at all. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


iS 5 

“Joseph was not Wazir of Egypt at this time 1 : 
he was a boy of about sixteen that had just been 
sold as a slave to a party of Semitic dealers in 
precious stones who were on their way back to 
their homes, somewhere near Damascus, after a 
profitable season touring the provinces in Lower 
Egypt. Perhaps Mr. Pyecote could tell you more 
about that part than I can: his name’s Joseph!” 

Abus turned expectantly and without any 
suspicion that Ellicot was joking. To her it 
was all real. I could not disabuse her at once, 
for it would not only have spoiled her pleasure 
but probably stopped Ellicot altogether. I saw 
that he, too, was taking a keen delight in mak¬ 
ing his tale as interesting as possible. 

“The traders soon discovered that Joseph was 
no ordinary child. They found that he was the 
son of a distinguished man, who, if he heard of 
his son being in their possession, would surely 
have them all killed first and make enquiries 
afterward. Joseph was one of twelve brethren, 
it appeared: it was not good business at this time 
for a firm of itinerant jewellers to fall foul of 
twelve prosperous men all at once if it could be 
avoided. They discussed the question of ran¬ 
som at great length: they might say they had 

INobody is quite sure when he was. Some Egyptologists placing him with Amen- 
ophis III and others with Raineses II or Menepthah. There is no Egyptian record 
Of Joseph. 



i S 6 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

rescued him from desert robbers at great risk to 
their own caravan, but does a man with twelve 
grown sons pay ransom easily, or would they be 
delayed for a week in arguments and then possi¬ 
bly get nothing at all but a beating? It was 
decided, at last, to get rid of Joseph on the first 
possible opportunity to a caravan going the 
other way: that was better than risking anything 
for a matter so unimportant as a single slave. 
They had got him cheap, too; they might very 
well make a handsome profit on him. That they 
settled the affair thus is sure, because Joseph ap¬ 
peared very soon afterward in the public slave 
market at Thebes, where he was bought by my 
Lord Pa-tu-pa-ra as a house servant. 

“And so it was there that Zuleikha first saw 
him, instead of upon the Wazir’s throne. She 
did not doubt that he must know of her dreams 
or that he was not just as deeply in love with her 
as she was with him. She believed in her 
dreams against all odds. Of course she thought 
the modesty of his demeanour was due to the fact 
that he was only a slave while she was one of 
the greatest ladies in all Egypt. She knew that 
the first advances must come from her, there¬ 
fore: it was only a question of time and oppor¬ 
tunity. The next part of the story you know, 
for it is told in the Bible. The Persian story, 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 157 

however, is somewhat different; at least, it gives 
one a totally different aspect of the case. It tells 
how Joseph, not being brave enough to risk all 
for his love, fled from her and she, angry and 
disappointed in the lover she had dreamed of 
for years as a perfect being, snatched at his vest 
to detain him and tore it; she did not tear it off. 
Joseph, perhaps, had known that his master was 
not far away: his fears may have been quite jus¬ 
tified, for he ran into His Nibs at the door— 
straight into his arms! Pa-tu-pa-ra caught him 
and demanded at once what he was doing in the 
women’s apartments with his vest torn half off 
his back. Joseph may be excused for not hav¬ 
ing an answer ready. A lie is an abomination 
unto the Lord, but an ever-ready help in time of 
trouble, if you can think of a good one: even so, 
I don’t know what he could have said to explain 
his predicament. Joseph couldn’t think of any¬ 
thing plausible so he was marched straight off 
to prison, pending investigations, where a little 
child, the daughter of the gaoler, was suddenly 
taken with what was considered the gift of 
prophecy. She said: 

“ ‘If the vest of Joseph is torn in front, he is 
guilty, but if it is torn behind, he is not guilty 
and Pharaoh will pardon him.’ 

“And that, of curse, is what happened. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


158 

There must have been stormy times in high life 
just about that time, for the Chief Butler and 
the Chief Baker were sent to prison; Pa-tu-pa- 
ra himself was soon in trouble and was dis¬ 
graced. He fell upon evil days, after having 
been the first citizen in the kingdom. That sort 
of thing could happen quite easily in a land 
which was governed by the whim of one man. 
He could no longer afford to keep his great 
establishment, with his wives and horses and 
chariots and innumerable slaves. Probably 
most of them were sold, but the case of Zuleikha 
was peculiar; she had committed a sin that was 
unpardonable by so much as thinking of soiling 
her fingers with a Hebrew slave. Foreigners, 
Mrs. Dunbagh, were considered unclean by the 
Egyptians, and an Egyptian princess was so 
exalted that there were very few people alive 
with whom she could with propriety have any 
human companionship at all. Nobody would 
buy such a wife, if she were offered for sale; she 
had made herself an outcast in the eyes of re¬ 
spectable Egyptian society. 

“Poor Zuleikha, she was unused to poverty, 
and the rough life she was now obliged to lead 
soon wore out her beauty, and worst of all, she 
became blind; probably not quite blind, since 
she was afterward cured, but I dare say she de- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


iS 9 

veloped a terrible case of ophthalmia, which is 
always endemic in Egypt. She was clothed in 
rags and so worn out with suffering that when 
Joseph next saw her, he could not possibly have 
recognized her. Through his wisdom in in¬ 
terpreting the dreams of his fellow prisoners, 
you remember, Joseph was noticed by Pharaoh, 
who, no doubt, thought it would be a wonderful 
thing to have a man who could read the future 
as the ruler of Egypt. It was nothing to him 
that the prisoner had tried to seduce the wife of 
the late Chief of the Eunuchs. So he exalted 
him as quickly as he had dismissed Pa-tu-pa-ra. 

“Joseph was a man of extraordinary ability. 
He became Wazir of Egypt, the greatest king¬ 
dom in the world, when he was little more than 
a boy. He probably was the only man who 
ever lived who beat Pitt to be Prime Minister 
of his country. Pitt was Prime Minister of 
England at twenty-one, Joseph was nineteen. 
Joseph, having good reason to know how ter¬ 
rible a thing famine is—it had cost him his 
liberty and nearly his life—decided that he 
would prepare Egypt against such an awful 
event in the future. He was the first man re¬ 
corded who cornered the wheat market, James, 
and I suspect that he ought to be the patron saint 
of trust lawyers; did that ever occur to you? 


160 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

“At all public functions where Joseph was 
obliged to be present in his capacity as the first 
citizen of Egypt, he began to notice a little old 
woman who was always veiled with black so 
that he could not see her face. She always stood 
as near to him as the guards would allow, but of 
course he paid no attention to her, though he 
noticed her as a spot of unusual colour in the 
crowd, the prevailing colours of which were 
Whites and Yellows. He was now cleansed of 
the impurity of being a foreigner. Under such 
circumstances a foreigner became naturalized 
and took a new name, an Egyptian one of course. 
Joseph took the name of Zaphnath Paaneah, 
which means ‘The Nourisher of Pharaoh.’ He 
was married to the daughter of a Priest of Ra, 
named Asenath, and a very grand young lady in¬ 
deed. And by the way, James, the obelisk, 
which stood in front of that temple, presided 
over by Joseph’s father-in-law, a temple which 
had already been standing a thousand years be¬ 
fore Joseph’s time, is still standing where it was 
placed though the temple and the god have long 
since disappeared. Do you think that means 
that art outlives even the gods?” 

For a moment he began to wander from his 
history, side-tracked by another fascinating sub¬ 
ject for argument. Abus plucked my sleeve 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


161 


anxiously and said, “Tell him he shall go on 
. . . about my country!” I took her hand, 

which she allowed me to hold because her at¬ 
tention was entirely concentrated elsewhere. 

“At last Joseph asked who the little old 
woman was, and they told him she was the dis¬ 
graced wife of Pa-tu-pa-ra, who had plotted 
against her husband when he became poor and 
had him poisoned.” 

Abus started violently. “It is not true!” she 
cried passionately. “It is not true!” I saw the 
light in her eyes which she always got when I 
held her hand in a particular way. “My Lord 
Pa-tu-pa-ra tried to . . . to . . . be¬ 
cause she was . . . his wife ... or 
married . . . and, not only that, he . . . 

She killed him with her bodkin, because she was 
for Joseph!” 

I was so staggered that I dropped her hand 
and at once became conscious that she was at¬ 
tracting attention from the other passengers 
who, though not interested in anything they 
could overhear from such a conversation, were 
quickened into the beginnings of a crowd when 
Abus’s little voice swelled to something like a 
tiny passionate scream against the injustice that 
was being done to her three thousand years late! 

“Wassa matter ’ere?” said the bo’sun, sud- 


162 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


denly pushing through the gathering crowd, 
“anybody ill or what?” 

Fortunately the bo’sun was a good friend of 
mine and I winked at him and put my hand to 
my pocket. He understood. 

“Move along ’ere, all you. . . . Oughter 

know better’n crowd a lidy. ’F she’s ill, she 
wants a breath o’ fresh air, a nif she ain’t, you 
got no call to come a ’eaping of yourselves on top 
of a private party’s chairs like a bunch o’ turnips 
’anging on the back fence. So get a move on!” 

He earned that half-crown, but Abus was very 
red and shy at having caused so much disturb¬ 
ance. “What did I say?” she asked, “and what 
did I say it for . . . I’ve quite forgotten! 

Oh, Mr. Joseph, I’m so sorry to have inter¬ 
rupted Mr. Ellicot. Oh, why did I do it! 
. . . He’ll never let me listen again.” 

“Oh, psha, of course he will. He’ll go right 
on in a minute, when the people have gone, 
won’t you, Ethel?” 

But I was wrong. Ellicot had disappeared, 
and ten minutes later I saw him marching round 
our deck space with Beppina on one arm and 
Beppina’s papa on the other. 


CHAPTER X 


T HOSE last two days with Abus before we 
reached Sydney will remain a nightmare 
for me until the end of Time. She obliged me 
to promise that I would not attempt to follow 
her nor even to recognize her when once she had 
left the ship, on account of her husband’s violent 
jealousy. She was sure he would kill her or 
beat her if he knew she had had a friend on 
board. “He wants me for him alone,” she said. 

She repeated, parrot-like, “I love my hus¬ 
band” so many times in those two days that I 
was nearly distracted by the sound of the words. 
She was trying hard to dominate herself also, 
for, though she did not love me well enough to 
leave her husband for me, she was sufficiently 
interested to know that she was going to miss 
me more than she cared to admit, even to herself. 
I had become part of her life and she looked up 
to me as a fountain of wisdom, at which she 
could drink at will. 

Yes, assuredly, she would miss me. Never 
by word of mouth did she indicate that life was 

163 




EGYPTIAN LOVE 


164 

going to be hard for her with her husband in 
general ways, but perhaps I knew, better than 
she, how hard it is to exchange the society of the 
educated for the uncouth, when one’s tastes lie 
in the better direction. She used up most of 
the first day in packing up for all her little 
party. The next she spent almost entirely with 
me. I begged her to come with me and run 
away from her husband a hundred times, but 
though I fancied she liked to hear me plead, 
she would not give in a hairsbreadth or en¬ 
courage me to think it possible in any event. 
“If I knew he shall kill me to-morrow, I would 
go back to him. He is my husband . . . 

and Theoboama also says it is necessary.” 

“And who is Theoboama, after all, to direct 
your physical life quite so closely?” I asked bit¬ 
terly. “This is a material world and he is a 
shadow. Surely I am to be considered, too, a 
little. I also have power to waken memories in 
you and to touch your heart a little.” 

“Yes, I will not deny it. I love you very 
dearly, Joseph. If I were not married, I would 
marry you, for I think you are a good man and 
would not beat your wife or treat her unkind. 
I could have been very happy with you, but it is 
necessary I am married to my husband.” 

“But it is necessary I am married to you 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 165 

. . . and I mean to make you, because I want 

you and need you so, Abus.” 

“Joseph, you shall not kiss me now. I have 
kissed enough. Before I go, perhaps I will 
kiss you and you will kiss me, once . . . but 
now, I cannot bear it. I know in my heart that 
it is right I go back to my husband, yes, that is 
necessary. That is right, and if I let you kiss 
me and hold me in your arms . . . Joseph, 

do not make it hard for me to do what is right. 
It is hard enough as it is. I want to do right, 
for your sake, for my sake, and for him, too. 
You must know I have thought of . . . be¬ 
ing with you, too, and I was ashamed at such a 
thought. For a woman to be with two men 
. . . it is not possible! 

“Last night I was sitting in my bed and Theo- 
boama came to me and put his arms round me. 
He knew just as if he were my own self what 
was in my mind and ... he would not let 
me be a bad woman. Somehow he was closer 
to my heart than ever before in all these ten 
years that he has been coming. I love him 
dearly, too, but I do not feel any longer that I 
am wicked to love him. That is right; and I do 
not know why. I asked him and he smiled and 
said: ‘You commit no sin in loving me, Abus.’ 

“Joseph, I dare not tell you all he said to me 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


166 

last night. I dare not believe it myself. I dare 
not see Theoboama again: it must stop. Oh, I 
am going mad; that must be it—nobody can be 
sane and love three men as I love you and Theo¬ 
boama and my husband . . . I do love my 

husband . . . too! But I don’t know how 

to stop. When I hold your hand everything in 
my mind becomes more clear, more . . . 

bright. It is like the colour of the fields, after 
some rain, richer, more glowing—as when I 
take off sun-spectacles. All the world is more 
glorious, but it is too bright for me. I am only 
a peasant girl . . . now . . . what¬ 
ever I may have been once, and you are a great 
gentleman. Perhaps you were a peasant when 
I was a lady! I only know it is right for me 
to go back to my husband, and I will go back 
to him through fire . . . because it is 
right.” 

She was sitting up, very stiff and straight, 
her hands clasped before her in her lap. Her 
mouth was absolutely under command and I 
could see no sign of the struggle which her 
words indicated must be going on somewhere 
within her. Her eyes looked twice their size, 
and suddenly a single tear forced its way out 
from under her lashes and waited for a second 
before it dropped. Abus would not acknowl- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 167 

edge that tear to herself, but I noticed that the 
skin was drawn very tightly over her knuckles; 
they were very white. Her nails were a deep 
pink also, and rimmed with white at the end, 
from the tension. I had longed to see passion 
in Abus’s face: I saw it now; not the passion of 
abandonment but of self-restraint. I could not 
bear to look at it and turned away, knowing, by 
that extreme, what the other must be. But she 
had disarmed me effectually: it was no good bid¬ 
ding for love any more. Principle meant more 
to her than anything I could offer. I knew very 
well she was doing what she thought right from 
the bottom of her soul, beside which I, or any¬ 
thing else, was unimportant. 

“Tell me about Theoboama—what he said to 
you last night, Abus.” 

“Joseph, I cannot: you will think of me as a 
bad woman afterward, and I want to remain a 
little in your heart’s memory after I am gone— 
aye, I want that to live by . . 

“Tell me, beloved. Once I wanted your body 
only, not knowing anything about your soul— 
perhaps not knowing whether I had a soul my¬ 
self, but now, I want your body and soul both, 
and I know that one won’t do without the other. 
Yet, if I must choose, I would choose as it must 
be, to have your soul without your body. You 


i68 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


can tell me anything that tongue can speak with¬ 
out altering my thought of you by the dot of an 
i or the cross of a 

A remote, grateful look came into her eyes. 
“I also could love like that,” she said. “I will 
tell. Theoboama said we are all being pun¬ 
ished for sins we did in our past lives. It was 
for that I married some dreadful man in Egypt, 
and Theoboama says that man is the same as my 
husband now, but he is not so bad ... he 
is not bad . . . now. I must be married to 

him this once more, because I did kill him, and 
even with such right as I had, it was not right 
for me to kill him, as I did. But after, I shall 
never see him again. Of me and you he said 
very little, but he said we have met before and 
that I loved you and that you were not worthy 
of me because fear possessed your heart. In this 
life, therefore, you shall be obliged to want me 
now as much as I wanted you then—that is the 
punishment. 

“It is of me that he spoke most of all, but I 
was not able to understand all the strange things 
he told me. For it was indeed a strange tale 
that he told. I could not hear him, what he 
said at first, because he was speaking not very 
clear, but every word which I did hear him 
speak I could read for hours afterward in the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 169 

air as if the words were printed in a newspaper. 
If I try I can still see them, but not so clear as 
to read them any more.” 

I reached out to hold her hand in case it might 
be of assistance to her in remembering. It 
slowly had its effect, and she said the words were 
becoming clearer. She was, in fact, seeing 
them clairvoyantly, and I wrote them down as 
nearly as I could immediately I had both hands 
free. 

At first there appeared to be some sort of 
struggle going on within her, as if it were not 
easy for her to separate herself from the present 
life to touch again upon what, though also part 
of herself, was something very remote, as when 
one is suddenly reminded of events which took 
place in early childhood. A casual word may 
bring back a whole condition of life, from 
which flashes strike one so vividly that one feels 
everything must suddenly crystallize and give us 
back the very moment. The atmosphere of the 
moment is there, but the incidents are disjointed 
one from another. 

The magnetic sympathy between us was cer¬ 
tainly a very real thing. By the change in her 
expression I could see her become more en rap¬ 
port with her former life every minute. Dur¬ 
ing the change her eyelids twitched slightly as 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


170 

they twitch with every changing thought, but 
presently her eyes became like those of a statue, 
still and calm. At first she frowned like a per¬ 
son in great perplexity but at length her brow 
smoothed out and became very white. I 
imagined that her eyes slanted more than at 
ordinary times and that her mouth became more 
like the chiselled, enigmatical smile of Queen 
Tii. At other times Abus spoke rather quickly, 
with a somewhat peculiar staccato but not 
unmusical way, but when she was possessed by 
memory, her voice was low, smooth, and de¬ 
liberate as of one who is completely master of 
himself. 

I gazed at her anxiously while this change 
was slowly being accomplished in her, and for a 
while her lips were moved by inaudible words. 
If there is anything in dual personality, I am 
very sure that Abus was a marvellous case of it. 
I am sure she had a totally different outlook on 
life when she was remembering Egypt from the 
altitude of a princess than when she was dream¬ 
ing of possibilities only in her peasant estate. 
What I have written, purporting to be her 
words, are of course not accurate, but the sub¬ 
stance of what she said is as I have written it 
and many of the phrases are reproduced ver¬ 
batim. She was speaking for some time, sev- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


171 

eral minutes, before I was able to understand 
more than a word here and there, but though I 
may have missed a little, I am very sure that I 
have added nothing. 

I began to hear coherent sentences in what 
appeared to be a long account or explanation or 
something, perhaps by Theoboama, but of 
course Abus could not help me afterward. She 
herself remembered very little but the outlines 
of what she had been saying. This is what I 
wrote down, after a few fragmentary words 
which I could not piece together into sentences 
at all: 

“But Amenophis lived in the prosperity and 
peace which his father had made. He loved 
the works of skilful artificers and every plea¬ 
sure, but though he had many concubines in the 
courts of the palace he would not marry a wife 
to make her Queen over Egypt. 

“He went with his huntsmen to hunt lions in 
a far country. He was separated from his com¬ 
panions and perceived that he was lost. 

“He saw a silver lioness with a mane of tawny 
gold, and, stricken by the fire of her eyes, his 
senses almost abandoned their envelope. 

“Amenophis clutched the bridle of his horse 
when it leaped up and he fell upon the ground. 
And when he opened his eyes a Syrian girl of 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


172 

exquisite beauty, with hands like amber, was 
bathing his temples with water. 

“For a while he lay still regarding her with 
wonder, and feeling for the first time the passion 
of love he lifted his arms around her neck and 
drew her down to him, saying: ‘Beloved, it is for 
this that Pharaoh was lost, that he should enjoy 
the delight of capturing a royal lioness with his 
naked hands. Thou art my Queen and never 
shall another rule in Egypt while Amenophis 
lives. 

“And Tii answered: ‘Thy handmaid is be¬ 
neath the feet of my Lord, whoever he may be/ 
for she did not believe that he was the King, 
supposing that to be the imagination of fever. 

“Then Amenophis drew her closer unto him 
and she cried out; but he comforted her, saying: 
‘Kings have no need of priests and I myself am 
the law of Egypt, therefore fear not.’ 

“And thus he married her and she was called 
Queen Tii.” 

Abus was silent for several minutes—and then 
she closed her eyes. Then she continued: 

“Now there was a priestess in the temple of 
Ammon-Ra, a fearless and brazen woman who 
loved Amenophis, and she was a bastard of the 
Captain of the Royal Guard with a Canaanite 
slave. And when it was told her that Pharaoh 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 173 

had made a vow saying that Tii, the Syrian, 
should be Queen of all Egypt, her heart was 
filled with anger. 

“She made sacrifices to Ammon-Ra, and at 
last Ammon said that whatever boon she would 
ask, that he would fulfill. And she, being full 
of wickedness, said: ‘Give me the heart of the 
first-born who shall dwell between the thrones.’ 
And Ammon promised her that boon. 

“Three months later Ammon fulfilled his 
promise which he had made and gave to Zillah 
the body of a young mouse which had been born 
between the thrones of Pharaoh and Queen Tii. 

“And rage filled the heart of Zillah, that 
woman of low origin, who by favour of the Cap¬ 
tain of the Guard had been hidden in the temple. 

“When Amenophis knew how that Zillah had 
failed in her purpose he laughed aloud, but 
when his first-born was brought to birth he was 
afraid, for Zillah was become the concubine of 
the High Priest of Ammon-Ra and he knew 
that her anger against his child would lead her 
to seek to destroy it, by the favour of Ammon 
and his Chief Priest. And fearing to put her 
to death on account of the Chief Priest, he sub¬ 
stituted the child of a slave for his own, which 
he conveyed privily by night to the court of 
Taimous, King of Africa, bidding him declare 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


174 

before all the world that this girl-child was his 
own. 

“And Zillah contrived to slay the child of a 
slave on the day that it was first brought to the 
temple of Ammon-Ra, and was content with her 
revenge. 

“But the child of Amenophis and Queen Tii 
was named Zuleikha and was known as the Prin¬ 
cess of Africa. So much did Taimoiis love her 
that he could not think of her without sighing, 
for that he knew she was not his own and that 
at any time Pharaoh might require her of him. 
And the name which his love gave her was 
Abus, which means, being interpreted, a sigh. 

“Now Amenophis was blinded by his love for 
Tii and committed sin in leaving his daughter 
to the care of another, even to Taimoiis, his 
servant. 

“Therefore is Amenophis punished by being 
condemned to watch over Abus in this incarna¬ 
tion, and lest the punishment should be too 
sweet, the gods compel him to do so without a 
complete physical body. Less than nothing is 
he when he cannot actively serve her and seldom 
may he manifest himself as a man and be able to 
take a father’s delight in the beauty of his daugh¬ 
ter. And he is called Theo Phoboumai, 1 which 

1 T <0 0€<O (fiOpOV/AOt 



EGYPTIAN LOVE 


175 

the Alexandrine Greeks call Theoboama, be¬ 
cause he was afraid of the god, Ammon-Ra.” 

“So Theoboama is your father!” 

“He is my father.” 

“And Tii, the most beautiful Queen of Egypt, 
was your mother . . . my God, what an 

ancestry! Ellicot was right again. He first 
pointed out how much like her you are. You 
have been a great princess in the greatest city 
of the ancient world, born in one palace and 
brought up in another, with a thousand serv¬ 
ants, with the power of life and death over 
them and the wealth of the whole world!” 

“Get them chairs stacked!” 

The words struck like a blow from a whip. 

“Bo’sun’s orders, miss, very sorry . . . 

Sydney termorrer ... we gotta stack the 
chairs to-night.” 

We tried to settle ourselves in a dozen places 
from which we were ignominiously turned out 
every time. There is no place in the steerage 
for a princess of Egypt, indeed no room any¬ 
where in a ship for steerage passengers when it 
is near a port. A hysterical fever attacks the 
petty officers, and the underlings are cursed and 
blasphemed upon to drive them to the work they 
do automatically at every stop. Abominable 
and filthy language is a tradition on the sea. The 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


176 

officers almost invariably take the name of the 
Lord needlessly, if not in vain, every time they 
open their mouths. It is said to be necessary 
in dealing with sailors, though why it should be 
more necessary in dealing with sailors than with 
stenographers or bank clerks I have never been 
able to understand. It is a matter of convention 
only; perhaps a tradition of the time when the 
locality of the polestar and supplication to the 
gods were the only knowledge of navigation 
the captain and his officers possessed. Certain it 
is that we should raise our eyebrows slightly if 
the chief cashier of the Bank of England be¬ 
spoke his clerks in the same terms that many a 
first officer, who may very well be his own 
brother, uses to his subordinates, and we 
should be astonished to hear that the financial 
world would fall to pieces if he used a milder 
civility! 

And while I think of it, it is curious to note 
the difference between the swearing on an Eng¬ 
lish and an American ship. English swearing 
is almost entirely sexual, while the American 
form is religious. English anger inspires a man 
and an officer to accuse his men of sexual in¬ 
version and illegitimacy, while an American, 
under equally exasperating circumstances, in¬ 
vokes without ceasing the Second Person of the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


177 

Trinity and prophesies the probable estate after 
death of the man he is addressing. 

It was a hectic night and a bleak morning. I 
slept little that night and woke early to rise and 
pace the decks to no purpose while the sun rose 
in the usual tropical violet flush and burst into 
the pale air. Besides the slight throbbing of the 
engines, there was hardly any perceptible move¬ 
ment. Then the ship slid through the rough 
water into the mouth of the harbour and we 
began the last stretch of our voyage from the 
Heads to the Circular Quay, a distance of about 
six miles. I and my fellow passengers stood 
saying over and over again the meaningless 
things one says before the actual good-byes be¬ 
gin. I felt very conscious that I should never 
see any of these people again, and there were 
very few for whom I entertained any particular 
desire to do so. 

A sensation of sadness came over me, how¬ 
ever, when I thought that Billy and one or two 
of the others would soon be no more than a 
memory. Billy King made me a real proposal, 
to travel with me as my body servant, and I have 
kicked myself a thousand times for letting the 
chance slip by. He timed his offer ill: my mind 
was full of other matters at the moment and I 
am afraid I refused rather curtly. I know he 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


178 

was hurt by my manner and he avoided me after 
saying a perfunctory and aggrieved farewell. 
I could not see him in my life just then, I could 
not see anybody but Abus, and, of course, Elli- 
cot, but I regretted that Billy and I parted like 
that. I left him my tea-basket and a Bank of 
England note hidden in it, in the charge of a 
steward. I wonder if it ever reached him. So 
Billy departed with his anaemic brother who was 
as colourless as a bottle of Pluto water—to work, 
I believe, in the mines in Tasmania. 

Abus vanished into the women’s quarters and 
I did not see her again that night. 

Big Frank Forsyth, too, I was sorry to see go 
out of my life, and the genial baker. . . . 

When I said good-bye to them I asked for their 
addresses and said I hoped we should meet 
again. I think they liked me, those good fel¬ 
lows, as well as I liked them, but there was an 
insurmountable barrier between us like a wall 
upon which the shore placed a rim of broken 
bottles impossible to negotiate. The “Sir” of 
social distinction came back into their conversa¬ 
tion without their noticing it; they fumbled 
with their hands, nervously, and wiped them on 
their trousers before shaking hands. Forsyth 
gazed at the distant horizon. William Stiff 
cleared his throat to speak for the party. Even 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 179 

Tom, the ill-tempered, was acquiescent: he was 
on shore with both feet and the world looked 
better to him than it had looked for three weeks 
and more. I had a sneaking suspicion that the 
moment had been rehearsed or at least some¬ 
what considered in advance. 

“If I may speak for my friends,” he said, por¬ 
tentously, “and I think, Sir, I do speak for all 
of them, I may say we ’ave been proud to know 
you, almost like friends in a manner of speak¬ 
ing; sleeping next and all that in the same cabin, 
but we know just the same it’s good-bye and 
we’re sorry for it. We know you ain’t the same 
sort as us, and why you came steerage of course 
we don’t know, nor don’t enquire, but among the 
people you’re going to be among, we can’t be 
among, even if we wanted to ... I mean 
we’d like to see you again, but we know we won’t 
so . . . good-bye.” 

Ellicot said, gravely, but with an irony that I 
hoped they didn’t hear as clearly as I did: “Your 
sentiments and your feelings do you credit, 
Brother Stiff.” 

For my part I said good-bye sadly, for I knew 
they were right and I was truly sorry to see the 
last of them. 

“I think you’ve got an exaggerated idea of 
us,” I said, “but I do hope you’ll all remember, 


180 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

if we ever do meet again, that you will pipe up 
and give us a hail. I shall always be glad to 
see you, even if I have to shake a king off one 
arm and a duchess off the other to shake hands 
with you!” 

“And it’s a deal more likely to be a police¬ 
man,” put in Ellicot. 

So we all laughed, and parted before the laugh 
failed us and revealed what was underneath. 
Good-bye, Stiff, and good-bye, Frank. Never 
shall I forget Frank Forsyth after that hand¬ 
shake. I thought I should have to go straight 
to the hospital: it was all I could do not to cry 
out. My hand ached for hours afterward. 






CHAPTER XI 

I DID not see Abus leave the ship. It was 
agreed that we had separated for ever and 
that I was not to recognize her even if we ever 
happened to meet. I saw her with her husband 
and her brother and the children in the Custom 
House, opening their peculiar peasant luggage 
for inspection. I tried to avoid them but chance 
led their steps toward me and she passed without 
a sign of recognition: she would not even avoid 
looking at me. We were utter strangers. 

“By God, she’s a thoroughbred!” said Ellicot, 
squeezing my arm, “and I must say, that’s the 
finest dramatic performance I ever saw from you 
in my life. If you could do that every time, 
James, you are wasted off the stage.” 

“Her husband doesn’t look so bad at first 
glance,” I observed, “especially when he smiles, 
but knowing his reputation, one can easily 
imagine that it might be true.” 

“He’s in a good temper now, but did you see 
what he did to that chap who picked up one of 
their portmanteaux by mistake?” 

181 




iSz 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“I didn’t see.” 

“He clapped his hand on the fellow’s fore¬ 
arm and gave it a shake that spun the bag 
right over, and glared at the man like a wild 
animal!” 

I am a biased witness, of course, but I think 
I never saw a man with a more horrible expres¬ 
sion in spite of the fact that he was not physi¬ 
cally unattractive. I cursed myself for my 
promise, but what I could have done if I had not 
been bound by it, I really don’t know. 

From the cab which took Ellicot and me to 
the Hotel Grand-Bristol, I saw the party once 
more, half an hour later, going into a third-rate 
“Sea Food” restaurant. 

That was an awful day, and the night which 
succeeded it was worse. Imagination showed 
me what must be happening to my princess in 
some loathsome little semi-detached villa in the 
suburbs of Battery Town. I saw the useless, 
ugly furniture of the parlour and the gilt gas 
bracket draped with green muslin against the 
attentions of flies. And the kitchen, which was 
to be her daily portion. And the dark choco¬ 
late paint at the sides of the narrow stairs slink¬ 
ing along the wall, up to the second floor, the 
middle of which would be decorated by a new 
strip of red-and-green imitation Axminster car- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


183 

pet, fourteen inches wide. And the bedroom, 
with its cheap, inflated white water jug squat¬ 
ting in a thick wash hand-basin; useless orna¬ 
ments, for the washing would be done in a tin 
basin at the sink somewhere ... a smell 
of old sponge . . . because, well, it would 
make less work. And the bed! . . . And 
the bed! 

If I had been alone in our room, I believe I 
should have screamed out, but I couldn’t make 
a sound to relieve my feelings. Ellicot read 
himself to sleep with his pocket Homer and the 
hours of darkness passed slowly and without 
sleep for me. I envied him: he seemed to have 
forgotten Beppina completely. As soon as she 
was sure that he was leaving the boat at Sydney, 
she took no further pains to hide her interest in 
Hans. Ellicot had left one more girl behind 
him and she was not crying her eyes out about 
it. There were as good fish in the ship as in the 
seas outside. 

Ellicot’s lecherous passions were almost too 
shallow to be dignified with the importance of 
sin. Albeit disapproving strongly, I am bound 
to admit that their effect on him was, for every¬ 
day purposes, rather good than otherwise. They 
did not leave him hard and mean and tarnished 
spiritually: they were as gilding is to the gold 


184 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

of true love; the same thing, but so thin that it 
could only last a very little while. 

Hours passed in the awful stillness, broken 
only occasionally when Ellicot turned in his 
sleep. A few minutes after two Ellicot turned 
on the light briskly and came over to me with a 
pocket handkerchief in his hand to mop my fore¬ 
head which was wet with perspiration. He 
took my hand and said, “I’m awfully sorry, 
James . . . better have a cigarette. I 

can’t sleep either.” 

“Are you ... I thought you were 
asleep. Are you thinking of Bepp?” 

“Oh, Bepp ... no, that is, not much. I 
can’t sleep because you’re so beastly stoical. I 
know you are having a rotten time and I keep 
waiting to hear you sigh or groan or something 
—I should . . . but you’re . . . you 

don’t let out a peep. . . . Let’s talk.” 

So we talked till about four, after which we 
slept the sleep of youth until half-past eleven the 
next day. I got rid of Ellicot as early as I 
could. I was no fit companion for anybody. I 
spent a lot of time in the early afternoon writing 
a “last letter” to Abus, which of course I tore up, 
and walked the streets the rest of the day until 
dinner time, occasionally buying something and 
losing it again at the next place, where I hap- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 185 

pened to sit down. It was March and there was 
bathing at Manly. Ellicot spent the day there 
with a yellow-haired schoolgirl whom he picked 
up on the beach. “Nice, but too young to play 
with,” was all he had to say about her, and that 
she “smelt of daffodils.” 

“Say, Pye, let’s go to Fiji,” he remarked at 
dinner: “there’s a boat goes to-morrow as ever 
is, at midday. It takes about ten days to get 
there and we can come back if we don’t like it.” 

“Why, but Fiji is all wild, isn’t it?” I replied 
absently. “Sounds rather wild to me.” 

“I dare say it is, but ... I feel wild. 
Don’t you feel wild enough for Fiji, James? I 
believe it would suit us.” 

We walked down to the docks to look at the 
ship after dinner. It was too dark to see much 
and too late to go aboard, but it looked like a 
ship capable of bearing our weight, so we de¬ 
cided to go. There was nothing else to do. I 
had already seen all of Australia that I wanted 
and though I had no hopes that Fiji would look 
any better to me, I decided to fall in with Elli- 
cot’s plan. 

Once it was decided, I could not help feeling 
a thrill of interest in spite of my misery. I had 
always thought of Australia as being a part of 
Great Britain, where people who didn’t get on 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


186 

at home, for one reason or another, went or were 
sent. I found it, indeed, very different from 
England and, as I have subsequently discov¬ 
ered, far more like America than anything in the 
Old World. Fiji, on the other hand, I had no 
mental image of whatever. It was vaguely 
associated in my mind with palm trees and nak¬ 
edness and missionary stew. To me it was the 
land where W. S. Gilbert’s Bishop of Rumfifoo 
might dwell, whose people 

“. . . lived on scalps, served up in rum, 

The only sauce they knew.” 

I had no conception of what I should need to 
go to such an outlandish place, and I mentally 
resolved to buy a tropical helmet, such as I had 
refused, with some scorn, to purchase in Port 
Said, though Ellicot had indulged in one. I 
tried to pull myself together and put the thought 
of Abus far from me. It was a hard job, but I 
prepared to face the future with a stiff upper 
lip. 

Six o’clock the next morning saw me up and 
dressed, and while Ellicot slept soundly, I set 
out for the docks to see the ship we meant to take 
at midday. The world was well awake and 
astir among the network of tram lines that ter¬ 
minate in the vicinity of the Circular Quay, 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 187 

Market carts crowded with vegetables jogged to 
and fro, and coffee stalls were doing a lively 
breakfast trade. I had a cup of coffee and a 
large triangle of some sort of plain cake at one 
of them before I made my attack on the yards 
full of cases and barrels of general merchandise. 

I found the ship again without difficulty and 
went on board in the charge of a white-coated 
steward and chose our cabins. It wasn’t a bad 
boat at all and I heard that there were very few 
passengers. The steward told me that Suva was 
the capital of Fiji and that it was a considerable 
town about a mile and a half square; that there 
were hotels and a fine Government House where 
the British Governor and High Commissioner 
of the Pacific (then Sir Bickam Sweet-Escott) 
directed the affairs of the whole group. I also 
learned that Fiji consisted of two principal 
islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu which, to¬ 
gether, are about as large as Wales ... it 
didn’t seem to be possible to keep Wales out of 
the conversation and it gave me a twinge of pain 
to hear him mention it. There were other 
islands, too; Taviuni was said to be a beautiful 
place, but the other islands were all pretty hard 
to get to unless one could afford to hire a special 
boat. That was all—and it was enough. I re¬ 
garded my journey as begun and started for the 


i88 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ticket office to reserve our passages before I 
realized that offices do not open at half-past six 
or even seven in the morning. 

There was nothing to do but wander and wait 
till the desks of the white-collar population were 
filled. The air was bright and cool and the 
whole harbour was awake with ferry boats. It 
seemed strange to think that the up-to-date city 
of Sydney, with its electricity, steam, and work¬ 
ing rabble of civilization, situated upon the fin¬ 
est harbour in the world in which a forest of 
ships could be lost without difficulty, was part 
of a gigantic island, the interior of which is 
practically unknown to this day. Here, where 
the tram stops, naked hunters were stalking the 
kangaroo not so very long ago. Where are they 
now? The aborigines are almost extinct and 
in the large cities are almost never seen, even 
the few debased specimens that remain about 
cities. Out in the bush, within ride of a few 
hours, strange animals that exist nowhere else 
on the planet still live and a few natives, drink- 
sodden, drag out their few remaining days. 
White Australia is the slogan of the five or six 
million people who own a continent capable of 
supporting a hundred million. The “Blacks” 
or Bushmen have been driven into the remote 
lands where the white man cannot live. In the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 189 

north and northwest there still exist native tribes 
which do not know that there are white men in 
Australia at all, where the habits and customs of 
men who lived twenty thousand years ago are 
still the rule of life. The Stone Age is there 
alive, where men live to this day with spear 
and boomerang, and do not know the more ad¬ 
vanced bow and arrow. On the edges of the 
huge sheep farms, far from the reach of the law, 
the white man still treats the native as if he were 
no more than an animal. It is not so long since 
white men went out to shoot natives as an ex¬ 
citing sport. Side by side with such men are 
missionaries who go out to teach their rudi¬ 
mentary brethren the subtle opinions of the 
suburbs of European cities regarding what they 
are pleased to call salvation, saving those whom 
God forgot to instruct. In one place there is a 
station, or was at this time, where the mission¬ 
aries were living barricaded in their settlement 
and afraid to come out. For ten years they had 
tried to begin their instructions, and beyond an 
occasional spear found, thrown hopefully over 
the barricades, they had had almost no contact 
with the vigorous and active heathen around 
them. 

It seemed like an eternity of wandering that I 
passed among the lumber and barrels and car- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


190 

goes waiting to be enshipped or removed. Ev¬ 
erybody I met shouted or grunted at me to get 
out of his way, not without reason. I was an 
anacronism there. Logically, I should have 
been in bed, or at best sipping my early tea at the 
hands of a valet at this hour. I was buffeted 
about from place to place until I had wandered 
nearly all over the shipping section of the quay. 
Lost among the warehouses and stacks of crates, 
I observed a knot of men standing round some¬ 
thing or somebody in the shade of a huge der¬ 
rick. As I came near I heard several snatches 
of conversation which intrigued me. 

“She’s balmy, that’s my opinion, balmy on 
the crumpet,” said one fat man in blue overalls 
with an oil can in his hand. He was going 
back to the engine house. “Better get ’old o’ 
Mr. Watson, ’e’ll see to ’er. Get ’er orf to a 
nice comfitable lunatic asylium where she be¬ 
longs.” 

“Pore woman, slep out, did she? Bitter cold 
it gets nights, too, for all it’s so warm in the 
day.” 

“Oo slep out?” 

“Little bit of a woman with red ’air, over by 
the derrick. Can’t speak, ain’t got no friends, 
and don’t know nothink. Better get ’old o’ Mr. 
Watson, he’s in charge. If it was in the evening 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 191 

now, I’d know what to do for ’er myself; you bet 
I would!” 

“Sam, y’ old devil, you get back to your old 
gas engine,” said the other, laughing. “I ain’t 
trusting you so very much in the broad day¬ 
light!” 

A pang shot through me when I heard she 
had red hair and I quickened my steps uncon¬ 
sciously in the direction “Sam” indicated with 
the long nose of his oil can. 

There is not much of the missionary and re¬ 
former in me. Coming from England and see¬ 
ing a crowd of dirty men round a woman who 
bore evidence of having “slep out,” it was not 
naturally my first thought to push myself 
forward to render assistance. Such a thing sug¬ 
gested a simple case of drink, as it would cer¬ 
tainly be in a London slum, but now, it seemed 
to me that it was my natural duty to interfere. 
It was my business to see to it that no red-haired 
woman was in difficulties while I “passed by on 
the other side.” I hated to do it and even now 
hesitated for a moment. A vision of Abus rose 
in my mind, like an imperious angel, ordering 
me to go to the rescue, and I strode over to the 
gathering with disgust in my heart. The crowd 
seemed to move and tumble over itself, like flies 
upon a broken fruit, soiling itself but unwilling 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


192 

to leave. Fresh spectators were arriving every 
instant, and those who had seen enough were 
pushing their way out—heartless, useless, and 
helpless. Suddenly a glimpse that I caught 
through a gap in the mob filled me with horror 
—the woman was so small and so like Abus 
. . . Was it my fevered imagination that 

saw everybody with red hair in one memory? 
No ... it was Abus! . . .it was 
Abus! She was sitting bolt upright on a beam, 
surrounded by a group of stevedores who were 
trying to find out who she was and where she 
came from. 

“By your leave, let me pass,” I said, hustling 
through the crowd. 

“Mr. Watson . . ” 

“That’s all right, I’ve seen Mr. Watson, I’m a 
doctor . . . take her right away at once 

. . . hospital ... no time to lose 
. . . all right . . . get a cab.” 

My darling, weak and dishevelled by her 
night out, threw her arms around my neck and 
burst into tears. 

“Nutty all right,” said a bystander. “Thinks 
the doc’s ’er sweetheart. Pore thing!” 

“She’s escaped, that’s what it is.” 

“She dunno where she are. Thought she was 
a tart, I did, painted, and all,” 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


193 

The cab appeared, and lifting Abus in I told 
the cabman to drive to St. Mary’s Nursing 
Home, the first thing that came into my head. 

“Where’s that?” said the cabman. 

“Drive . . . drive north, I’ll direct you.” 

And so we got away. 

We had hardly driven out of the immediate 
neighbourhood of the docks when the driver 
said, “If this y’ere nursing ’ome is very far, I’d 
be obliged if you’d take another cab. My ’orse 
’asn’t ’ad ’is feed and . . .” 

“It is,” I cried, “it’s a hell of a long way 
. . . I quite understand. Stop the first 

taxi.” 

That problem had settled itself. We got a 
taxi in a few minutes, and I told the man to drive 
us to a quiet place where we could have break¬ 
fast. Abus sat beside me speechless, her hand 
in mine, and I was so glad to have got her back 
again beside me that I could not ask any ques¬ 
tions. When she tried to say something I 
stopped her: “Not now, darling. We’ll have 
something to eat first and then you’ll feel better 
and more able to talk.” She was crying silently 
and I put my arm around her. 

After we had fortified ourselves with coffee 
and bacon and eggs I bought her a hat at a 
neighbouring store, for her own had fallen into 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


194 

the mud and been badly trampled on. She 
managed to tidy herself quite well and I took 
her to a small hotel (I didn’t dare to take her to 
the Grand-Bristol), where we had our talk in 
peace. The details of her sufferings during 
those two days are not to be dwelt on. She had 
left her husband a few hours after their break¬ 
fast in the “Sea Food” establishment. He had 
had a row with her brother, who had gone off 
in a rage, leaving them no address, and she had 
not been able to face the life she divined was in 
store for her. Her husband had taken their 
railway tickets out to Battery Town, fifty miles 
away, and she had lost herself in the crowd in¬ 
tentionally. She knew that he would be look¬ 
ing for her, but she said she would rather die 
than go back to him now. 

“It’s nothing he has done . . . yet, but 

what I know he shall do to me,” she said, “and 
I can’t, Joseph, I tried . . . but I can’t go 

back!” 

“Of course you can’t go back. I was a fool 
ever to let you slip through my hands, ever to 
let you go or to promise to leave you alone. Be¬ 
sides, 

‘Pleasant is this saying of the wise, 

Love and the scent of musk, one can’t disguise. 7 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


195 

Your husband would have found you out in less 
than a week. You belong to me and you must 
come with me. But, has Theoboama not come 
to you at all?” 

“Yes, in the Salvation Army shelter where I 
stayed the first night, but I could not understand 
him very well; he only smiled ... I 
thought he was coming when all those men 
found me asleep. I did not mean to sleep there, 
but I had no more money left . . . and you 

came instead!” 

“That means he is willing to let me look after 
you. Ellicot and I are going . . . some¬ 

where, by ship, at twelve o’clock, never mind 
where. I have telephoned Ellicot to take three 
passages, and you will get out of your husband’s 
reach, for of course all the police are out after 
you by now.” 

“The police!” cried Abus in alarm. “I have 
done no crime—will they put me in prison?” 

“I don’t know what they will do. I don’t 
know what the law is in this country, but if they 
catch you, you may be sure you will be sent 
straight back to your husband.” 

“I daren’t, Joseph . . . they won’t make 

me do that, will they? I can work and make 
enough to live.” 

It took me a good hour and a half to persuade 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


196 

her that she couldn’t do that without being found 
by her husband sooner or later. She was suffi¬ 
ciently conspicuous in any crowd to be difficult 
to disguise effectually. At last she cried in my 
arms, worn out with fatigue and very weariness 
of the spirit, and I took advantage of her physi¬ 
cal weakness to make her agree to my proposal. 

“You must come with me for a month, and 
afterward, if you want to come back here, you 
shall, but I want you to trust me entirely . . . 

and come.” 

Abus blushed scarlet. “Do you mean I shall 
CQme and pretend to be your wife?” 

“No, as my sister, a sister who is in deep 
mourning because she has lost her husband 
. . . that is true, Abus, and I hope it is 

equally true that he has lost you, for you would 
certainly die in a very little while if you go back 
to him. You will have a baby every year and 
sometimes he will lose his temper, as he did yes¬ 
terday . . . and presently he will become 

very unhappy with the anxiety of keeping an 
unhappy wife with too many children in a for¬ 
eign land where he will not have half the village 
to help whenever he lifts his hand, as he did in 
your village in Wales. People have to live for 
themselves in Australia, and if he gives demon¬ 
strations of his astonishing strength, it will very 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


197 

soon Inspire someone to give a demonstration 
of astonishing skill with a pistol. Did you ever 
hear of a man in Maesteg carrying a revolver? 
No, of course not, but you’d be surprised to 
know how many men outside the cities always 
carry one here. And don’t you think he would 
be even more suspicious of you if he got you 
back, after running away once?” 

Abus would not argue the point. She under¬ 
stood that very well. She was anxious to be 
clear upon the one point that really mattered. 
She felt that she had burned her boats and per¬ 
haps that the life before her was as dangerous :as 
the life behind her. “Brawd mogi yu tagu ” she 
said to herself, a Welsh proverb that she often 
used, meaning, “Smothering and choking, are 
brothers.” She shrugged her shoulders help¬ 
lessly. 

“Do you promise me I shall be your sister, 
and you will not try to ... to .. . ?” 

“If I promise, and I do—you can surely trust 
me now, Abus, seeing that I let you go from me 
only because I promised!” 

“Joseph, I will come with you.” 

“And ask no questions, not even speak, for the 
time is short before we start. Promise me? 
There is a great deal to be done. I have a 
plan.” 


198 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“I promise, Joseph.” 

“A brother may kiss his sister,” I said, and I 
kissed her gently on the cheek. Then I packed 
her into the taxi and drove to Holden’s, that 
wonderful department store which is said to be 
the largest in the world, and one of the best. It 
was a bewildered Abus that I ordered to be 
clothed in widow’s weeds with a long crepe 
veil. I told her that she was dumb and could 
not speak, and that I, her brother, was ordering 
her an outfit to go to Europe. I intimated that 
if she saw me ordering anything that was vio¬ 
lently distasteful to her, that she was to stop me, 
but without word of mouth. She had given her 
word and she kept it religiously. It was like a 
play. I went from counter to counter, hastily, 
for there was not too much time, and purchased 
everything I could think of which a woman 
ought to have: dresses, shoes, clothes of all kinds, 
stockings, handkerchiefs, tooth powder and van¬ 
ishing cream; together with several things, I 
remember, which Abus had never seen before. 
She began the discovery of a smart lady’s life 
with a manicure set. All this was packed into 
a great trunk from the trunk department and 
sent direct to the ship. I got her a nice little 
dressing case with tortoise-shell fittings besides, 
and hurried her away to the hotel Grand- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 199 

Bristol, where she now created no more atten¬ 
tion than a young widow usually does. If she 
looked at all like the Abus of the day before, I, 
at least, could see no resemblance that I thought 
the police would recognize. I doubt very much 
if her husband would have recognized her. She 
was an absolutely different person, and to my 
eyes very much more like herself. Her vivid 
colouring did not seem extraordinary now, but 
only beautiful. 

Ellicot accepted the situation without turning 
a hair. 

“All I want to know, James, is she my sister 
or yours? You’ve got dark hair and she might 
more easily be mine, with my colouring. And 
besides, she’d be easer for you to marry, later on, 
if she were my sister; mind you, I’m not asking 
for any more relatives, but what do you think? 
There’s a limit to brotherly affection, you know, 
and you might forget yourself.” I saw his 
point at once, and hopefully adopted his amend¬ 
ment. 

The boat was punctual. Twelve o’clock saw 
us steaming up the finest harbour in the world. 
The sea was a perfect blue and the sky as cloud¬ 
less as my own horizon at the moment. From 
the first-class promenade we looked down into 
the pit where the third-class passengers were 


200 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


clotted upon the dirty deck in a mess of orange 
peel and empty biscuit boxes. The tiny yachts, 
hardly bigger than toys, that are peculiar to Syd¬ 
ney Harbour, skimmed to and fro among the 
ferry-steamers and the large ocean-going vessels 
at anchor, and the gulls screamed farewell as we 
churned up a path of foam on the invisible trail 
that led to Fiji. 



CHAPTER XII 


1 US was listed on the ship’s register as 



/jl Mrs. Arthur Thebes. Passports were not 
necessary in those happy days, so there was no 
trouble in taking her on board. She was so shy 
in her widow’s black that every movement and 
gesture was perfect for a disconsolate widow, 
and though the other passengers were disturbed 
by her evident distress of mind and would will¬ 
ingly have heard her story and offered their 
sympathy, they hesitated to force themselves 
upon her. Only one old woman made herself 
offensive—there is always one in every crowd— 
and Ellicot diverted her inquisitive attention 
with supreme skill. There were no women on 
board to whom Ellicot could fancy himself 
sentimentally attracted, so he amused himself by 
becoming the perfect old-lady’s companion. I 
had never seen him function in that capacity be¬ 
fore, and it was a new revelation of his versa¬ 
tility. He was never without a shawl or some 
knitting in his hands, and I believe he made 
elaborate notes of what his feelings and beliefs 
ought to be to maintain the proper impression 






202 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


that he had created. He is a past master at it 
now, of course—it is part of his job—but then 
it was a new game into which he entered with 
something like passion. He had the clearest 
orthodox Protestant views, the most rigid mo¬ 
rality, and respect amounting to reverence for 
what Mrs. Lockwood Beard called “The Proper 
Thing.” 

She had suspicions of a young sugar engineer 
and his bride who had been married in Sydney 
and were on their way to the sugar mill at Naus- 
sori, on the Rewa River in Fiji. Mrs. Beard, 
however, had her doubts about their being really 
married at all. “You can nearly always tell,” 
she said. She believed this young couple were 
living “on improper terms” and was resolved 
to expose them if she could find out the truth of 
the matter. She meant to “watch” them, and 
Ellicot averred that if her suspicions were veri¬ 
fied, and he had little doubt they would be, it 
was “perfectly disgusting.” He promised that 
he, too, would “watch” them, and would take a 
keen delight in “branding” them both. He be¬ 
lieved the man should be “branded” no less than 
the woman, if he participated in the sin. Mrs. 
Beard was inclined to think this a rather harsh 
view to take, though she was obliged to admit 
the inexorable justice of it. Ellicot was firm 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


203 

on this point: he considered that they should 
both be “hounded out of society.” 

“You’ve no idea how pure that old woman is, 
James,” he said. “She’s a curiosity, and her 
mind is a confused sink of iniquity. Now that 
she knows that I’m pure, too, she unburdens her 
spotted and ring-straked soul to me until I feel 
that she ought to be poisoned or pole-axed.” 

“So you are pure, too, this week?” 

“I am, James, but I was not always so. I was 
converted from a life of advanced sin by a 
clergyman in the suburbs of Bournemouth who 
touched me lightly on the shoulder just as I was 
about to drink a glass of beer. He was inspired 
to tell me that I was going to hell, and, seeing the 
Light quite suddenly, the fatal glass dropped 
from my hand and crashed into a thousand 
pieces upon the floor. Yes, James, I owe my 
regeneration to the Reverend Milton Pearl, 
whose dinky name I saw on the back of an en¬ 
velope in a barber’s shop once; queer how a 
name sticks sometimes! He has meant a great 
deal to me and Mrs. Lockwood Beard feels that 
I was a ‘brand snatched from the burning.’ She 
is particularly interested in my estate before I 
was snatched, and would, I fancy, like to hear 
me give more minute accounts of the burning. I 
have been too bashful so far. Seriously, James, 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


204 

she’s a mess. Her husband manufactures pianos 
somewhere in Australia and she can come away 
only because her ancient mother is watching 
him at home. It appears he is frail in the things 
of the flesh, or would be if he got half a chance. 
She needed a rest and a complete change, her 
doctor told her, and never was a man righter in 
his diagnosis on the second count. I suspect 
him of being in the pay of the husband. If I 
were married to a woman like that I should beat 
her with a stick—very hard! Her mind is like 
a refuse heap, made of the offal of other people’s 
lives. 

‘A damned dung-heap, 

Whereon my spirit like a rooster crows!’ 

Do you know, she calls living with her husband, 
‘the cross we poor women have to bear for our 
husbands.’ Think of it, James! She’s dread¬ 
ful, but very interesting. I had no idea there 
were really people like that! She is a gross 
libertine, beside whom I am virtuous—boiled 
twenty minutes; a militant puritan so inverted 
that she can feel conscious of her atrophied 
senses only through finding out succulent details 
about those who are ‘living on improper terms’ 
—don’t you love the expression? She thinks of 
evil from morning to night and wallows in her 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


205 

thought of it: it’s never out of her mind; it’s like 
an incubus! 

“I am being exceedingly diverted, but after an 
hour or so of her, and it, I have to go away and 
wash both my hands and all my teeth! That’s 
what perfect purity does for me!” 

Ellicot kept Mrs. Beard’s attention from Abus 
at least, and in a few days she began to lose her 
embarrassment. The comfort of the first-class 
cabin and the deference shown her by the ship’s 
servants began to break down her reserve. She 
was more at ease and in her element by the end 
of the ten days than she had been during the 
three weeks in the steerage of the Orama. I 
think she was sorry when the trip was over. I, 
however, was glad. I never felt quite sure that 
Mrs. Beard would not break from the clutches 
of the virtuous Ellicot and, in a paroxysm of 
Purity, denounce us for travelling with a woman 
to whom neither of us was related. It would 
have been a plum for her, but she was too busy 
suspecting the sugar man’s bride to pay much 
attention to Abus, who stayed a good deal in her 
cabin and was never seen about the deck unat¬ 
tended by one of us. At the same time, a guilty 
conscience gave me no peace and I never felt 
sure. It was a relief to me when we were safely 
moored to the long wooden pier at Suva. 


206 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

We arrived safely and put up at the hotel, 
sacred, as far as I can remember, to the memory 
of St. George. Abus noticed with great inter¬ 
est the short sulu and bare legs of the native 
waiters who served our dinner. 

“It is like Egypt,” she said, and though I 
had never thought of it before, the sulu, or sim¬ 
ple cloth worn as a skirt to the knee and twisted 
outward as one wears a towel at the Turkish 
baths, was exactly the dress of the common 
people of ancient Egypt. The Fijians often 
look astonishingly Egyptian, so much so that 
one is forcibly reminded of the Egyptian bas- 
reliefs of men cooking food and poling boats 
when one sees the Fijians about their daily 
occupations in the country, especially when sil¬ 
houetted against the light. 

I had not been in Suva two days before the 
Bishop of Polynesia called, having seen my 
name among the list of arrivals in the Fiji News . 
He is a charming man whom I used to know 
long ago in London when he was a vicar of a 
poor parish in the east of London. Ellicot and 
Abus went for a long walk at the first glimpse 
of his gaiters. I was delighted to see him again, 
but after renewing my acquaintance and talking 
of old times, it occurred to me that it would be 
safer to be farther away from bishops and the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


207 

English society of Fiji. I thought of Naus- 
sori, being the only place in Fiji that I knew 
the name of, but at length we decided to go to 
the Exploring Isles, about a hundred and eighty 
miles from Viti Levu. 

We travelled on a large schooner carrying 
lumber, and every hour of the journey was a 
pure delight. We passed islands and strange 
reefs of coral miles from any shore where the 
green waves curled out of a deep blue water 
which was almost purple. On one of them we 
encountered the huge hull of a tramp steamer, 
the Paris, which had then been a landmark and a 
warning for a dozen years. We also encoun¬ 
tered a small boat derelict, alternately sailing 
and flapping in the wind, for the sheet was 
lashed. It was being escorted by a shoal of 
sharks which cut the water, watching it eagerly, 
but watching it in vain. They had already had 
all that they were going to have of what it had 
contained. We hove to and the captain pro¬ 
duced a couple of rifles with which we shot 
seven or eight of the brutes before anybody felt 
like lowering a boat to go and investigate. 

“Them brutes,” said the captain, “you can’t 
kill ’em. Fill ’em full o’ lead and they wags 
their tails and swims off, spitting the bullets out 
of their mouths as they go. I ’ates them.” 


208 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


While the boat we lowered went after the 
derelict, the native sailors threw out a shark 
line baited with salt pork. It was taken almost 
before it touched the water and a fierce, unequal 
struggle ensued. The shark had no chance to 
run: he was hooked securely upon a hook eight 
inches long with a foot of steel chain. Teth¬ 
ered to a belaying pin on the gunwale, he fought 
and splashed in vain, for the rope was a new 
one and very strong. He was not a very large 
shark, barely seven feet long, and he was 
dragged up on a davit when he showed signs of 
weakening. The natives lashed his tail and 
slashed open his belly with cutlasses until they 
had completely disembowelled the poor beast. 
Then with a block of wood firmly wedged in his 
mouth, they respectfully cut the hook from be¬ 
tween his five rows of triangular teeth. 

“Make ’im swim better, ’e’ll feel lighter that 
way,” said the mate. 

“He’ll do no more swimming,” I said. 

“You’ll see,” replied the mate, confidently, 
“you can’t kill ’em, ’e’ll swim away and swim 
for hours before ’e knows ’is insides is gone. 
’Ave a bit of belly-ache, I dessay, but that’s all. 
’E’ll die, of course, but ’e’ll die o’ starvation.” 

“Poor beast!” 

“Well,” said the mate in astonishment at the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


209 

thought of pitying a shark, “if you’re sorry for 
’im, you may be sorry for another pore shark 
what died o’ starvation on the coast of Inagua, 
in the Bahamas. That was a sad story and no 
mistake. Capt’n ’ad to throw out a whole bar’l 
of salt pork . . . tipped the whole lot out 

on the deck first to see if there was any good at 
the bottom, and we threw the bar’l overboard 
first. Big shark follering the ship swallered 
that bar’l whole, though you mayn’t believe it. 
Pore beast, ’e ’ad no luck . . . swallered 

that bar’l wrong way up, bottom side down. 
An’ if you’ll believe me, though ’e swallered all 
the rotten pork after we thrun it out, ’e got no 
good of it. Pork all went back into the bar’l 
and the pore shark died o’ starvation. Ef that 
ain’t a hard luck story! Pore shark, I felt sorry 
for ’im meself. Pore shark, indeed!” 

You never know what to believe on shipboard. 
So many impossible things are actual facts that 
in time one gets to the point of being able to be¬ 
lieve almost anything. I have not been to sea 
long enough to swallow the last story but, to my 
horror, I perceived that the mate was apparently 
not exceeding the truth about the eviscerated 
shark before us. It wavered on the surface for 
a few minutes when they dropped him down and 
then swam off, right side up, in the direction of 


210 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


the reef. We could see the shadow of him for 
a long way in the shallows at its edge. 

We took the boat up on deck. There was 
nothing to indicate to whom it had belonged. 
It was probably a ship’s tender from a boat of 
about our own tonnage and I fancy we were not 
more than a few hours late because there was a 
watch found in a seaman’s jacket left on board 
—it was still going. What had induced him to 
jump overboard to the sharks rather than to die 
in his boat? We shall never know, but the 
empty water jar was probably the answer. Men 
can subsist for days and weeks without food or 
with incredible substitutes, but the absence of 
fresh water crazes them so that a quick death 
among sharks seems an easy way out. 

We touched at the island of Moala, which is 
eighty miles from anywhere, and were sorely 
tempted to stop there, for it is a beautiful island. 
It hung in the morning mist like a jewel of jade 
which hardly rested upon the pale malachite 
sea. It was a South Sea island of dreams where 
there is still very little sign of the white man’s 
presence though it boasts a store and a couple of 
native villages. We hesitated to change our 
plan though, because of the difficulty of getting 
away. Schooners come seldom and unless one 
has a boat, there must one remain, perhaps for 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


211 


months, until one does arrive. We had taken 
passages for Lakeba which, after Loma Loma, is 
the principal town of the Lau group. Abus was 
delighted with everything and continually com¬ 
mented on the likeness of the canoes and cos¬ 
tumes of the Fijians because they recalled Egypt 
to her mind. 

The sea was too rough at Lakeba to negotiate 
the channel in the reef, which at Lakeba is only 
ninety feet wide. When we arrived, the rolling 
breakers, half a mile from shore, formed an un¬ 
broken wall of foam between the open sea and 
the placid, pale water within the lagoon. We 
finally landed about three miles down the coast 
in small boats which natives steered miracu¬ 
lously through a network of foam-covered rocks. 
A man hung over the bow, estimating the depth 
of the water and giving directions while an¬ 
other sculled at the stern, profited most skilfully 
by every wave to lift the boat safely round or 
over each submerged coral head as we encoun¬ 
tered it. I freely confess that I was nervous 
during that half mile of furious excitement 
which was not allayed by seeing a small sail¬ 
boat founder on the rocks a couple of hundred 
yards above us while its three occupants swam 
ashore. Ellicot, very pale and exaggeratedly 
facetious, was no less nervous than I, but Abus 


212 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


moved with the precision of a chess-man and 
betrayed no sign of fear whatever, though she 
confessed afterward that she had been frightened 
almost to death. We were all wet and be¬ 
draggled when we arrived at the town of 
Lakeba. 

Lakeba is a town of Chiefs. It is the capital 
of a kingdom comprising many islands scattered 
over an area of twenty thousand miles. We were 
housed at first in the tiny guest house, probably 
the most elaborate Fijian house now standing. 
It was built as a love-offering by his people 
for the Roko Tui Lau: Roko being a British 
title giving him authority under the Crown, 
Tui, his native title of distinction, corresponding 
to King, and Lau (which means also, the East) 
is the group of islands over which he presides. 
Well might he be called Alifereti 1 the Great. 

Roko Tui Lau was a marvellous figure of a 
man; tall, well over six feet and perfectly pro¬ 
portioned, dignified as only a man can be whose 
forbears have had the power of life and death 
over their neighbours, and who is descended 
from the gods. His wife, a stout woman who 
generally wore a long cotton dress, always with 
a bright flower stuck in her grizzled hair, was 
also a personage of considerable distinction, one 


lAlfred. 



EGYPTIAN LOVE 


213 

of the last scions of the very greatest house in 
Fiji. She was the great-granddaughter of 
Cakobau, the redoubtable chieftain who, claim¬ 
ing kingship over all Fiji, ceded the islands to 
Britain in the days of Queen Victoria to protect 
himself from the attack of another giant, Maafu, 
who had begun the invasion of the Fijian islands 
with a mighty fleet of war canoes from Tonga, 
the adjacent group of islands. 

The people of Lakeba are not unaccustomed 
to receiving shipwrecked and near-shipwrecked 
parties. Any vessel which comes in rough 
weather has the choice of risking wreck or going 
away again. When we were recovering from 
our experience and had succeeded in getting a 
wash and change of clothes we heard a stampede 
down to the regular boat landing. The village 
was assembled to watch the fate of another 
schooner which was laden with provisions from 
Suva and in which everybody was more or less 
interested in consequence. We joined the throng 
hurriedly. It was astonishing to see the same 
drama from the stage and the stalls within an 
hour. The little schooner was dancing up and 
down like a toy boat in a mill stream. It was 
clearly out of control and we could descry the 
despair of the men on board who were equally 
afraid to jump and swim for it and to stay on 


214 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

board, for there is a submarine whirlpool under 
the coral reef at the Lakeba passage which sucks 
a wreck and all it contains far under the wall of 
rock, from which nothing is ever recovered. 

Suddenly the ship was lifted up on a huge 
wave. “That’s the end,” said an old trader, 
turning to go, but a moment later the ship was 
floating in calm water and the crew were laugh¬ 
ing hysterically in complete safety. The wave 
had lifted them over the reef and landed them 
in sufficient water less than a quarter of a mile 
from the beach, from which canoes set out on 
all sides to congratulate the visitors on their 
escape. 

We, being very distinguished visitors, were ac¬ 
commodated in the Chief’s guest house which 
stands in his own compound about thirty yards 
from his own huge house of thatch. Our little 
house is a tour de force of Fijian art. It is 
built of reeds and thatched with pandanus leaves 
upon a strong frame of masi and other hardwood 
trees. It is all bound together with sinnet made 
from cocoanut fibre, brown and black, which is 
plaited in intricate patterns and decorated with 
thousands of tiny white shells, with never a nail 
or screw. Prominent also in the decoration are 
numbers of the large white cowry shells that 
are sacred to the use of Chiefs. Large tappa 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 215 

curtains of black and white stencilled patterns 
of native work divided the house into two par¬ 
titions to give Abus a certain amount of privacy; 
but privacy is not very well understood in the 
remoter islands of Fiji, nor, without a special 
order from Roko Tui Lau, could we have been 
certain to be free from social calls from the 
natives at any hour of the day or night, visiting, 
according to their custom, for the mere pleasure 
of “sara-sara,” or just frank “looking around.” 

The novelty of every detail of life, the peculiar 
rustle of the cocoanut trees, the sound of which 
is not unlike a light rain, and the never-ceasing 
distant roar of the reef, soon combined to make 
us forget that there were such places as white 
men’s cities, with trams and hotels, theatres and 
sweatshops, anywhere at all. 

The people of Lau are a golden brown and, 
due to admixture with Maafu’s Polynesians 
from Tonga, long hair is not uncommon in place 
of the frizzy bush, cut like a box hedge, which 
distinguishes the pure-bred Fijian. They are 
beautiful besides, and it was not to be expected 
that Ellicot would be able to maintain the vir¬ 
tue of the past fortnight for very long. There 
was not a white woman besides a missionary’s 
lady, spouse of a third-rate Australian haber¬ 
dasher whose half-educated intelligence had 


2l6 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


yearned to take the Gospel to the poor heathen 
in the comfort and security of British Fiji. 
That lady was chaperoned by her worthy face 
and I was curious to see how long it would be 
before Ellicot looked kindly upon the allure¬ 
ment of “brown love.” The amazing speed 
with which he was acquiring the language from 
the little grammar and dictionary he had pro¬ 
cured in Suva excited my wonder. I did not 
succeed with it very well myself; Abus learned 
it better than I, and she was as gay as a child, 
as if she had not just passed through as bitter a 
time as a woman is often required to face. 

Ellicot was kind and gentle with her and never 
once overstepped the limits of brotherly regard, 
and she had begun to like him, as of course she 
must. Trouble from that quarter was not to be 
thought of. Ellicot was a scream with the na¬ 
tives. His unblushing attempt to talk their 
language delighted them. He would act and 
gesticulate until they understood what he meant. 
I relied very much on the Fijian boy we en¬ 
gaged in Suva as interpreter and cook, one 
Peniasi Paqi Vau, whom we called “Penny,” of 
course. 

Long before Ellicot acquired any great fluency 
in their tongue, the inevitable happened. He 
came in one evening flushed with the excitement 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


217 

of another conquest. I saw it in his eyes before 
I heard him exclaim: 

“James, I like these people; I’m never go¬ 
ing back to Europe,” he said. “They’re 
wonderful!” 

“The old story, I suppose: how do you man¬ 
age it? Why, you can’t even talk to her!” 

“Oh, we get along,” he remarked, gaily para¬ 
phrasing a verse of Kipling’s: 

‘Things you learn in love with the white, 
’Elps you a lot with the brown.’ 

And besides, I can talk to her first rate. She 
likes me.” 

“James, you’re incorrigible!” 

“She doesn’t know how old she is, but I judge 
she is about seventeen and the daughter of a 
bishop—he’s Bishop of the Free Church of 
Tonga!” 

“How dark is she?” 

“She’s not dark at all, she’s the colour of 
honey. She’s half Tongan, and my social posi¬ 
tion is going up. They have white shells as big 
as your fist all round their house, tied outside 
on the reed-work: it’s the house by the big 
mango tree, with the bananas behind it—the one 
raised up on a mound about four feet high.” 

“The old man hates the Methodist mission- 


218 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


ary; that’s what brought us together, over a 
bowl of yaqona. 1 The old boy asked me if I 
was a Methodist and I asserted vehemently that 
though I had many stains on my character it 
was virgin white with regard to that. I told 
him that Chiefs in my country were never Meth¬ 
odists, that it was the religion of the servants, 
which, when you come to think of it, is about 
true. That pleased him enormously. I told 
him he was all right to black the eye of any 
Methodist he could.” 

“You said all that in Fijian?” 

“Well, not idiomatically, I dare say, but he 
understood me well enough. Funny thing how 
these people like poetry. I recited a lot of 
Swinburne and Virgil to them, and they listened 
attentively, just as if they understood. I think 
they did, too, somehow. I think the rhythm of 
the lines pleased them and that they were im- 
\ pressed at my being able to make so long a 
speech with the apparent fluency that they ad¬ 
mire so much. When I began some of Swin¬ 
burne’s ‘Hendecasyllabics’ several men began to 
swing their hands as they do when they sing. 
They prefer Swinburne to Virgil, James, which 
is a pity: I wish I could speak Fijian well, and 
I’m going to . . . when I finished they all 


lYaqona is the same as Ava or Kava as it is called in various parts of the Pacific. 



EGYPTIAN LOVE 


219 

said: ‘Vinaka } vinaka’ . . . and they meant 

it.” 

Vinaka means good, thank you, and general 
approval, for hand-clapping has a special cere¬ 
monial significance in Fiji; it is not used for 
applause. 

“I hope you’ll keep this new affair as quiet 
as possible from Abus. There are some things 
which are hard to explain to the peasant mind.” 

“I’ll keep it quiet enough, but . . . 

princesses are easier to explain to. And be¬ 
sides, sisters don’t interfere with their brothers’ 
affairs. I’m glad we came to Fiji. It’ll be all 
right, you’ll see.” 

As we intended to stay on indefinitely we did 
not care to impose too long upon the hospitality 
of our host, for though we were paying for our 
board and lodging to a certain extent, we prob¬ 
ably made a good deal of extra trouble for the 
household and we thought it would be better, 
for many reasons, to have a place of our own. 
We managed to arrange to occupy a fine house 
which belonged to a local Buli, a sort of mayor 
of a district. There was to be a great yaqona- 
drinking and concert-giving for us on the day 
we left the Tui’s house, for which there had 
been already a good deal of preparation and 
rehearsal under the bread-fruit trees about two 


220 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


hundred yards from where we lived. Fijian 
singing is very beautiful, the men’s voices being 
especially fine: it has an additional virtue to my 
ears in being all choral singing—they have no 
soloists. But, for my part, I’m generally glad 
when anybody stops singing. 

How I wish I could record what the beauty 
of Fiji meant to me. By chance I came upon 
an old MS. which I wrote on the spot, on the 
very day of that concert, though I did not know 
at the time it was to be a concert of honour for 
us. It was intended to be purely pictorial, mere 
notes of the colours, and I wrote it sitting on a 
mound of green grass in the shade of a sweet 
green orange tree with my back against a low 
curved cocoanut bole. It has at least the merit 
of truth to nature: 

“The Buli’s house, like all Chiefly houses, is 
raised upon a platform of earth, faced with large 
stones. It is built of reeds set diagonally, 
plaited where they are set lightly in the earth 
which forms a simple ziz-zag pattern around 
the base. It has the usual three doors, one at 
the foot of the house for commoners and two 
near the Chiefly end, one on either side. It is 
liKe the others which surround it at a respectful 
distance, the only difference being that it is 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


221 


larger, set higher, and better constructed. 
Nearly all the houses here are round-ended— 
‘hurricane-ended’—in the Tongan fashion, but 
a few are rectangular like pure Fijian houses. 

“Before the door I can count eight or ten 
varieties of tree without turning my head. The 
gray-green grass is as close-cut as a rough Eng¬ 
lish lawn, intersected in several directions with 
narrow foot-paths showing the mauve earth 
worn to an irregular patch at popular corners. 
A copper-coloured croton glows against the 
lower part of a nearly circular mass of mango 
foliage. A young tree, the top of which seems 
to have been dipped in varnish stain, is a shrill 
yellow-green sharply defined against the dark 
unicolour mass of an older tree behind. This 
is a characteristic of mango trees; one part of 
a tree will devote itself to making new leaves 
while another confines its attention to fruit- 
bearing. This one has just shed its reddish 
orange blossoms, and small green buttons have 
taken their place upon stalks made to allow 
room for the fruit to swell to about the size of 
a pear. Beyond are bread-fruit trees, each 
straggling bough supporting its candelabra of 
large ten-fingered leaves which enshrine the 
pointed buds of paler hue, set upright like a 
virid candle. 


222 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“Warm gray roofs glint through the succulent 
green and films of blue smoke are rising from an 
oven made in the ground. The stones have been 
heated in a hole and the food, wrapped in 
packets of bread-fruit leaves, is being placed 
upon them, to be covered with earth by a brown 
man in a loin cloth of vivid emerald green. 
Three women are seated by some large black 
cooking pots at the door of their house. They 
also wear a sulu but longer than the man’s, and 
another garment, in shape something between 
a man’s shirt and a kimono. They do not trouble 
to put their arms through the sleeves. A faded 
maroon colour, patterned with a darker shade; 
pale blue cotton is beside it . . . pink-lined 

feet. One has her face dusted with a glowing 
yellow: it is rather chic to wear turmeric in 
Lakeba. I wonder if Abus has noticed it; she 
has not spoken of it. Turmeric and pearls, 
azure and black! 

“A small child in a scarlet chemise with a 
garter of green mango leaves on one leg runs 
past two silver cocoanut boles, themselves 
splashed with a light red fungus, to meet her 
sister to whom, in some way or other, a piece of 
golden russet cloth a tone darker than her lissom 
body is attached. Another child, in an English 
dress trimmed with cheap lace and open down 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


223 

the back, has found the claw of a land crab 
among the ashes of yesterday’s oven. Some of the 
ash flew up into her eye. The edge of an Eng¬ 
lish dress should remedy the matter. The lace- 
trimmed abomination is accordingly lifted up, 
disclosing a golden “tummy.” . . . 

“A huge black swallow-tailed butterfly floats 
tantalizingly near. Three naked brown babies 
and a gray chicken with its feathers brushed the 
wrong way give chase. Ha! A dead heat for 
the chicken and the babies; the bembe (butter¬ 
fly) has eluded them. 

“A faint rain begins to fall, emphasizing the 
fragrance of the good earth. A golden rooster 
pecks indifferently until, with wings outspread, 
it occurs to him that it would be a good idea to 
woo one of his silved-speckled wives. He runs 
very fast in pursuit with his wings touching the 
ground: friend wife runs, too, but not so fast; 
she twists her ankle and falls. The etiquette of 
chicken modesty has been observed. 

“From one of the houses, the nearest to the 
gray rippling sea, a young girl appears in an 
ample robe of vermilion and hails one of the 
gilded youths of the village, gilt to the utmost 
to-day, dressed for the ceremony. He has 
crimped skirts of dyed black tappa, a large gar¬ 
land round his neck of magenta-dyed grass and 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


224 

sweet-scented frangipanni flowers. A long 
trailer of magenta ribbon hangs down his back. 
His skin glows like a Goujon bronze. 

“Comes from the beach another man who joins 
them. He also is on his way to dress for the 
ceremony. He wears a blue and white sulu and 
round his neck a necklace of half-dead banana 
leaf, green, splashed with lemon cadmium. 
Silver and mauve are the gleams on his oiled, 
brown satin back. Laughingly he rehearses a 
piece of meke (song), an apt quotation, pointed 
with gestures graceful as a snake. Squeals of 
delight from the girl as she shakes her furry 
head and peeps over her tombe, the long lock of 
maidenhood, at the other man. He laughs also, 
to be polite; not because he is amused. He is 
not at all amused. 

“Indian-file beneath the cocoanut trees come 
a troupe of girls who are coming home from 
fishing, some wearing, with their sulus, pina¬ 
fores over one shoulder and under the other. 
Others wear the sulu alone twisted across their 
breasts. All are patterned and dappled with 
flowers or stripes. Bright colours, exquisitely 
faded, wet, showing every ripple of their amber 
bodies beneath as they swing along in the sunlit 
rain. They have been wading for hours with 
the dripping nets they carry on their shoulders 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


225 

draped from one to the other. The first is in 
blood-red and white, the next in mauve and 
pink; crushed strawberry with a white chemise 
follows the green of a hedge-sparrow’s egg, 
checkered with faded pink touched with old 
gold. Gray-headed, short-haired mother brings 
up the rear, bearing a green basket full of im¬ 
possible fish: fish of scarlet and turquoise, 
splashed with gold, with beaks and teeth blue 
and silver, with sharp noses and others without 
any faces at all! Tired of pursuing a nonde¬ 
script dog, one of the brown babies elects to join 
the procession. Mother has come home: in his 
eyes one can see an inspired light. He has 
visions of sugar cane: she has three yards of it 
in her hand. 

“Earlier in the day a man, carrying his cere¬ 
monial dress over his shoulder, went round the 
village announcing the hour of the yaqona- 
drinking at the Tui’s house. Now the village 
lallis are being beaten, a lively tune on two notes. 
The hour is at hand.” 

We were the guests of honour at the evening 
entertainment. The yaqona was made, not with 
the great ceremony for the highest public func¬ 
tions, but with enough for us to realize what a 
deep influence the ceremonial yaqona-drinking 


226 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


must have on the native’s mind. The hereditary 
officials in gala dress, with faces blacked to 
render them supposedly unrecognizable, made 
and strained the odd aromatic beverage with 
dignity and beautiful gestures, singing withal 
the ancient yaqona song, the words of which have 
now no meaning, lost in immemorial antiquity. 
We may suppose they correspond to the modern 
Fijian language as Anglo-Saxon does to Eng¬ 
lish. Roko Tui Lau, their hereditary Chief, is 
served first by the server, who dances from the 
huge wooden bowl to where he sits and offers 
it crouching. He claps his hands solemnly 
while his Chief drinks. Then Abus was served, 
almost simultaneously, sitting on a chair in a 
white silk dress, bolt upright and more like a 
figure of Osiris than anything human could be 
imagined to be. Ellicot and I sat on the mat 
at her feet, native fashion, and after drinking, 
spun our bilos (cocoanut shell cups) on the 
ground, saying “Vinaka, vinaka/' in the ap¬ 
proved fashion, while the company murmured 
“a maca, maca/' with great satisfaction. Every 
moment of our behaviour was noticed as keenly 
as if we had been at a levee at the Court of St. 
James’s. 

The concert was held in the King’s own house, 
a huge barn-like structure about seventy feet 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


227 

long. The leader of the singing, with a cane 
tapping the mat before him as the signal to 
start, led the company, conducting to a certain 
extent as a European maestro would do. It was 
superb. 

The door was open and the village came. 
Even children were allowed to come and go 
freely if they behaved themselves and got in 
nobody’s way. Not far from me, by the door, 
a small boy lay upon the ground playing with 
a large moth which he held by its long proboscis. 
The poor creature afforded him diversion for 
nearly the whole time of the singing. When it 
would flutter no more he got up and went out. 
The chief lady singer had an empty baked-bean 
can beside her into which she spat thoughtfully 
from time to time. Occasionally, between songs, 
a friend would make a long arm across the floor 
and borrow it . . . the night outside the 

open doors was a purple mystery enclosed in the 
dust of stars among the waving fronds of cocoa- 
nut. 

When the music stopped the distant reef 
seemed to take up the refrain. The air was 
redolent of cocoanut oil, sandal-wood, and 
frangipanni, with which the Fijians love to 
scent their garlanded bodies and hair. Three 
taps on the mat. Are they beginning to sing 


228 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


again, another strange thin melody that seems 
to connect living man with the ages of the past? 
No, everybody rises and goes out without a 
word. The concert is over. Vinaka —it was 
wonderful. Vinaka, vinaka . 





CHAPTER XIII 

F OR several weeks the topic of Abuses mem¬ 
ories of Egypt was hardly alluded to. She 
had no more visitations from Theoboama, and 
I think we were all disinclined to approach the 
subject which seemed to be so intimately con¬ 
nected with the Orama and our life before Syd¬ 
ney. 

I was certainly more deeply in love with Abus 
every day I lived, but having given my word 
that I would make no attempt in assault of her 
marriage vows, my love seemed to be like a 
blind alley into which I had strayed, with only 
one outlet—that by which I had come in, Abus 
had passed through an emotional experience 
which, despite her apparent gaiety, I feared 
might prove not without injurious effects upon 
so delicate a sensibility as hers. My whole at¬ 
tention and behaviour was directed in her inter¬ 
est, as well as I understood it, and I determined 
to give her the best possible chance for recovery 
from the troubles she had passed through. 

A few weeks in the quiet of Lakeba had made 


229 









230 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

a great difference. We abstained from all out¬ 
ward expressions of intimacy, but since we really 
belonged to one another as only perfect mates 
can, a deep intimacy came into being which had 
few demonstrable evidences of its existence. It 
was something which we both felt without 
words or need for words; something, I imagine, 
like that which comes about in the luckily mar¬ 
ried, when the adorable storms of early wedded 
life are over. It was not easy for me, I know, 
especially with the Fijian amour of Ellicot and 
Maopa always before my eyes, for though it was 
as unobvious as such an affair can be, it was a 
picture in high relief to my eyes because I knew 
him so well, though I did not doubt that Abus 
was entirely ignorant of it. 

Ellicot was so thoroughly master of himself 
—he was designed by nature for intrigue. At 
its highest this quality manifested itself in him 
as the most exquisite tact; in its lowest, as the 
most perfect of poker players. He was utterly 
content with his golden lady, as he had been 
with Beppina. Living each day would have 
been a perfect joy for me also if it had not been 
for the steady undercurrent of desire which I 
could not entirely suppress. The lovely theory 
of “sublimating the sexual energy” is very diffi¬ 
cult at three-and-twenty when the object of one’s 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


231 

love lives in the same house, cooks meals, and 
directs the household generally as Abus did for 
us. 

Penny was quite a tolerable cook, too, and he 
could wash clothes like a French laundry: there 
was nothing in simple domestic accomplishment 
that he could not and would not do. In the 
evenings he went off to sing and vakamololo — 
that rhythmic arm and body dance which is so 
dear to the Fijian heart—for hours. He also, 
with frangipanni flowers in his hair or a wreath 
of orange lilies, was a welcome guest in the 
home of a certain lovely brown lady, perhaps 
more than one for all I knew. The warm damp 
atmosphere, scented with new and enticing 
odours, the wood doves for ever cooing their in¬ 
describably inviting, exciting love-notes, man 
and beast and every bird had each his mate 
. . . my own sat opposite me at every meal and 
walked with me beneath the mango trees . . . 
together, but singly. The whole air seemed to 
be full of love, not obviously or insistently, but 
there was a distinct feeling of placid content 
in physical matters which shone from the faces 
of everybody but the missionary and his consort. 
They alone reminded me of the unrest at home 
in Europe, of the “sin” which is the white man’s 
special invention and prerogative. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


£32 

This agony went on day after day; we never 
spoke of it nor acknowledged it; but we both 
knew very well, without need of words, that the 
situation was not one which could last for ever. 
The next move, however, must come from Abus: 
I could only supply silent provocation and op¬ 
portunities. Everything I did in this way she 
noticed. I know she noticed and I think she 
knew I knew she noticed, though it was seldom 
that so much as a sigh escaped her. 

A morning came when there was a new light 
in Abus’s eye, a mood that I had not seen before, 
faintly different from the colour of her usual 
demeanour, but no less distinguishable to me 
who lived only to notice the harmony or dis¬ 
harmony of her being. We ate cocoanut, freshly 
grated, with honey that morning, I remember, 
and Peniasi surpassed himself with the coffee. 
I felt that it was a day of importance, something 
was immanent, hanging over us, which did not 
concern Ellicot. He felt it, too, and went fishing 
in his new canoe with Maopa immediately after 
breakfast. I lit a pipe with the feeling that it 
would never be finished and in a little while, 
when Penny had cleared the breakfast table, 
Abus came and sat on the arm of my chair and 
stroked my forehead. 

“Joseph,” she said, “you are good. I have 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 233 

never known so good a man as you are. To me 
you are the most perfect man in the world, and 
. . . I want all this day for mine.” 

“All of every day is yours, beloved, and you 
know it. What makes you say that to-day?” 

“Something I cannot easily tell you . . . 

but I want all this day and we shall go some¬ 
where we have never been before.” 

“I have been thinking of taking you to see the 
hot water spring which Peniasi told us about; 
shall we do that?” 

Abus clapped her hands. “I remember, and 
I want to go. Let us go now!” 

“We cannot go there without him, because he 
alone knows the way there. We could never 
find it in the bush.” 

“That is the same, so that you are with me 
and no other, I mean, no other who is white. 
Penny doesn’t matter.” 

The infinite tact of the Fijian, born of a long 
inheritance of good manners, made one feel that 
he would be quite acceptable as a guide. I 
knew, without a word to him, that if we wished 
to be alone he would sense it and fade into the 
bush at a respectful distance before I could 
mention it. So we set out to see the spring. 

The natives are not very fond of going near 
the hot spring. It is rather uncanny and not 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


234 

surprising that a simple people should consider 
that it harboured devils. Peniasi did not mind 
going, though, for with our protection he felt 
himself secure, for he said it had been proved 
over and over again that “Viti magic no good 
for papalagi, all right below.” 

We asked him what proof he could show that 
evil spirits lived there and why it was dangerous 
for a Fijian to go there alone. He told us that 
the evil spirits certainly lived there and were 
more than likely to kill any Fijian they met who 
crossed their path. 

“Do you mean that a spirit is created out of 
thin air who beats and kills people as they pass 
by?” 

“Segai, saka” No sir, not that. They do not 
use violence, but they take the form of a beauti¬ 
ful young man or girl, according to the sex of 
the victim, and may appear anywhere along the 
road which leads near their domain. Only the 
other day a man from Naroi had a narrow 
escape. He met the fiend in the form of a very 
beautiful girl of a neighbouring village and she 
asked him for a cigarette as she passed. For¬ 
tunately for him, he had no tovaka in the knot 
of his sulu and he could not make her one. So 
he escaped. When he arrived at the village, 
after a considerable detour which he made to 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 235 

avoid any more of the spirits, he found the real 
maiden beating tappa in the shed at the back of- 
her father’s house. That was a lucky chance 
indeed. If he had happened to have the where¬ 
withal, courtesy would have obliged him to give 
some tobacco to the fiend and the contact estab¬ 
lished between them would have been enough 
to do the evil work. He would certainly have 
died before sundown. Peniasi was very sure 
the man from Naroi had had an unusual piece 
of luck. He himself was convinced indeed that 
he was pretty well protected anyhow from 
spirits of that kind, seeing that he had been bap¬ 
tized by a white man. 

We talked, all three together, until we were 
well outside the village and past the outlying 
barns and copra-drying tables. Then Peniasi, 
who nearly always carried a three-foot cutlass, 
or cane knife, in his hand, said he would go 
forward and cut a path when it became neces¬ 
sary “for your Mary.” He would keep within 
sight of us. There wasn’t a blade of bush to be 
cut and the path was excellent, but his innate 
tact told him that we were coming to the hot 
spring not only for curiosity. A little farther 
on, however, the path became overgrown and 
Penny’s cutlass was very useful. After ten min¬ 
utes’ climbing over rocks and through the path 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


236 

Peniasi cut for us, we reached the shining black 
limestone rocks, not unlike the slag of which 
grottoes and ferneries are sometimes made in 
England. I.t began its boot-destroying work 
on us and in places I was obliged almost to carry 
Abus who, mountaineer though she was by birth, 
could hardly negotiate the rocks in the footgear 
she was wearing. I have always envied the na¬ 
tives their bare feet and love to go barefoot my¬ 
self in the tropics when the road is not too rough, 
but I did not envy Penny his bare feet that day. 

There were no birds to break the silence of 
the bush, and amid the dark holes from which 
emerged long, straight intertwisted arms of the 
vau tree and stealthy creepers seeking the light 
from caverns beneath, even the common blue¬ 
tailed bronze lizards began to look uncanny; 
young dragons perhaps whose sire was watching 
and waiting in some hot-breathed cave below. 

It was there that I saw a large black and 
yellow swallow-tailed butterfly which is every¬ 
where rare, and one other which I do not re¬ 
member ever seeing before. The great bembe 
floated past my head so close and slow that I 
could see the velvet of its thorax and the balanc¬ 
ing movements of its dainty black body. It 
must have been four inches across, I judge, of 
an exquisite tawny orange with a black border 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


237 

perhaps a quarter of an inch wide. Peniasi 
also showed us a large stick insect, about nine 
inches long, which looked more like a dead twig 
than the real thing. 

When at last he pointed down a deep hole in 
the rock, the bottom of which contained, appar¬ 
ently, a cupful of water, I was grieved. “Is 
that all?” I asked, ruefully regarding the wreck 
of my shoes. “We came to see hot water; I 
can make that much on my spirit lamp any 
time!” 

Abus peered over my shoulder. “It is either 
full of water or it is empty,” said she. “There 
is such a well near Maesteg, but of cold water.” 

“Are you sure there is any water at all, Pen¬ 
iasi?” 

“lo, saka, wai, all right.” 

“You must throw a stone in it to make the 
surface move,” said Abus. “Then we shall see.” 

Still disbelieving that there was more than 
a puddle of water, I seized a large stone, and 
with a pontifical gesture consigned it to the pit. 
There were four feet of invisible water, invisible 
until the deep-voiced splash disturbed the still¬ 
ness and made it alive. It is just the right 
temperature for a real hot bath, but the air is 
too warm for steam. Now the movement makes 
the curved surface of the water plain. From 


238 EGYPTIAN LOVE 

where the uncouth stone struck, the frightened 
ripples fled to the ends of the cavern. At every 
edge of their prison, which was several feet be¬ 
low where we stood, they were making frantic 
efforts to scale the smooth cup-shaped walls. 
Rarely does anybody come here, and, I sup¬ 
pose, each one throws into the pool incredulous 
stones and the splash disturbs for one moment 
the song of its everlasting silence. 

On the way home Peniasi left us far behind 
when he had escorted us through the difficult 
part of the path. We walked slowly in the di¬ 
rection of home and Abus slipped her hand 
under my arm. The mosquitoes were beginning 
to be tiresome and we blessed Fiji for the cocoa- 
nut fibre whisks we carried more as a habit than 
a necessity, for the mosquitoes and sand flies are 
troublesome only at intervals. We turned off 
the road to the beach where there were none and 
sat down to rest and watch the curling waves of 
the reef, at this point only a few hundred yards 
from the shore. Abus sat close, holding my 
hand. For a while we did not talk. The evening 
was so beautiful that the only words I could 
have uttered were forbidden ones, and I sighed. 

“I know why you sigh, Joseph,” said Abus, 
“but now I wish you will sigh no more. I wish 
you will tell me how much you love me . . . 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


239 

No, Joseph, not with kissing ... yet 
. . . Tell me in words, holding me close to 

you.” 

“I love you as the sea loves the sand, coming 
closer every minute, filling every part of 
it . . .” 

“But you told me that the sea goes away every 
six hours!” 

“It cannot be always high tide, but my love 
would come back as surely as the tide returns 
and could never be far from you, even a little 
distance, for more than a few hours, and even 
then it leaves the sand full of its memory.” 

“Salt ... so salt and bitter, Joseph,” 
said Abus, smiling, and then more seriously: “Is 
love always bitter, like salt . . . not sweet?” 

“It is sweet . . . and in a sense it is salt, 
too. It is the salt of the earth, without which 
nothing has its finest flavour.” 

“Go on, tell me all about love. And all about 
me . . . and you . . . I am so happy; 

I have never been so happy before.” 

I suppose I said what lovers have told their 
ladies from time immemorial, not with the art 
of Ellicot, but sincerely and passionately. She 
listened eagerly, looking up into my face with 
a look in her eyes which I shall never forget. 
She seemed to be straining to see something very 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


240 

remote, something she was looking for, some¬ 
thing she knew was there, a look for which all 
women’s eyes are blessed, though I shall never 
see it again in this life. 

“And now kiss me, Joseph.” 

“And will you be my wife now? Will you 
come back to Australia and get a divorce and 
marry me?” 

“I will never have any husband but only you, 
Joseph. I am all yours. I am your wife al¬ 
ready. But to-day we will be ... as we 
have always been together. There is something 
I cannot tell you quite. Theoboama came to 
me last night and he told it to me. For now, 
what you wish, and what I wish, too . . . 

we cannot have that. I don’t know how to ex¬ 
plain it to you . . . yet. But I know I am 
your wife. Theoboama said I have been your 
wife for forty years. Kiss me once more before 
we go home. I love you, Joseph, as a fish loves 
the sea.” 




CHAPTER XIV 

T HE sun went down in a thin violet haze 
which is so common in the South Seas 
and so unusual elsewhere. The sea became like 
a sheet of iridescent kerosine oil that was in 
flames where the reef divided the shallows from 
the unfathomable deep beyond. There was al¬ 
most no twilight and we walked home slowly, 
utterly alone beneath a moonlit sky. 

Abus was full of surprises. She had more to 
tell me than she could express in English, mys¬ 
teries to elucidate, questions to ask, and still I 
could not fathom what was at the back of her 
thought. From having the most conventional 
peasant views on the subject of love and mar¬ 
riage, she had suddenly become a woman with 
the most modern viewpoint, able, as Huxley 
said, to be “tolerant toward anything except 
lying,” for whom the form of matrimony was 
nothing and to which she was quite indifferent. 

“It is not possible for a man to live here, 
alone,” she said, “without a wife. I know that 
you have not done like Mr. Ellicot because of 

241 










EGYPTIAN LOVE 


242 

me, and how I love you for that! But it is not 
right for you to live so, and I know it is only 
I that have prevented you. Is it not so? And 
I do not hate Mr. Ellicot for doing what he does 
. . . now. I understand a little better some 

things. It is not the same. And there is some¬ 
thing else, too. When a man in my village in 
Wales went . . . went to women, he was 

not like Mr. Ellicot. He came back with a 
look in his eyes that was bad, a look which made 
all of us women feel ashamed and . . . un¬ 

clean. It made him also rough and ugly, with 
children and animals, and in his heart he was 
ashamed because he knew that he had done 
wrong. And those who live like that in Wales 
do not go to church and are coarse and drink 
too much, and the women are painted on the 
face and brazen and bold, not like women . . . 
not human! And they buy clothes that are not 
modest and they are not clean like they were 
before. The married ones are not like that, but 
those who go with men and are not married, 
they are as I say. 

“But Mr. Ellicot, I love him really as a 
brother now. I know he has gone with many 
women and that he loves Maopa, to whom he 
gives so many presents. It is a real love, too, 
though not like ours. He does not despise her, 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


243 

and her friends, even her own parents are not 
ashamed for her, but treat her just the same. 
He has not the ugly look in his eyes and he 
treats all women with respect just as if he was 
. . . quite as he should be. I am sure he 

does not speak evil of Maopa when she is not 
there; he loves her and she loves him again. I 
think, too, that you have loved women like that, 
Joseph, women whom you did not wish to marry 
and live with all your life, but I do not mind, 
because you have never been ugly with them and 
you have never made them to feel ashamed. It 
has not made you bad like it makes men at home 
in Wales.” 

“Ellicot has tried not to let you know . . 

“Yes, I know that, too: he would not offend 
me if he can help it. But of course I know 
when he has been with Maopa. He is happier 
and gentler and more kind to me. How kind 
he is! I think Mr. Ellicot is very good, really; 
good like a minister, I mean—if only he did not 
love so many girls. And he talks so clever 
. . . especially when he has been with 

Maopa. I think sometimes he is almost so 
clever as are you!” 

“He’s a great deal cleverer than I am, Abus. 
On his own subjects he’s just about the cleverest 
man in England.” 


244 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


“I don’t know, but I think now that he is 
good and what he does is right—for him. But 
I am quite sure the people I knew in Wales 
would not do right to do as he does. And I 
think that if I should give myself to you that 
you will not despise me or make me ashamed 
. . . afterward. For me, the body is not so 

much, but the expression in the eyes is every¬ 
thing; is it not so, Joseph? I have seen people 
who live their whole lives without ever doing 
anything wrong . . . like that, who have 

cruel eyes—like the Methodist missionary . . . 
though he has a wife, too. But she is not 
happy, like Maopa is happy. Perhaps he would 
be better if he did love somebody, even a little. 
His eyes are all wrong, and he looks at me not 
right.” 

I think I had reason to be somewhat bewil¬ 
dered by all this. Abus, who until that moment 
had never shown any side of her but that of cold 
reserve, was suddenly become a warm-blooded, 
passionate little creature, throbbing with life 
and frankly accepting me as a lover and a hus¬ 
band. All her reserve had broken down, not 
with the weakness of an abandoned peasant, 
but deliberately choosing the attitude of mind 
that is slowly becoming general among the more 
highly educated and sensitive classes. It was 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 245 

due to nothing I had said or done: it was en¬ 
tirely her own doing. It seemed to come as the 
end of a long period of earnest thought, the 
same quality which, on the subject of heaven 
and hell, had caused her to leave her Church 
when she was seventeen or eighteen. She con¬ 
sidered herself married to me and never men¬ 
tioned the subject of her legal husband again. 
He had ceased to exist. But why did she claim 
so insistently that she had been married to me 
for forty years? Why not fifty, or twenty? 

She told me, when I asked her, that Theo- 
boama had told her so and that she had known 
for a long time that it must be true. 

“But why forty years?” 

“Because Theoboama said so!” 

And with that I was obliged to be satisfied. 
I reflected that with the best kind of spirit 
communications, even under test condition of 
the most rigorous kind, there is always a certain 
amount of material communicated that is utterly 
worthless or irrelevant—if indeed it is not all 
worthless. This seemed to me to be just such 
an occasion: a message had been given, and 
presuming that it was half true, as in my heart 
I felt it must be, this added touch of verisimili¬ 
tude could have no importance, though it had 
apparently made a great impression on Abus. 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


246 

I was in no mood to treat the revelations of 
Theoboama lightly: true or false, Theoboama’s 
pronouncements were of the utmost importance 
to me, as my whole future gave signs of being 
dependent on his whim. 

“Then you will give yourself to me . . . 

soon? And without waiting all the weary 
months of the law’s delays until we can be mar¬ 
ried?” 

“We are married . . . already!” 

“And you think that is what Theoboama 
meant when he said we were not to be married, 
when he said you were not for me in this life? 
Because we were already married ... for 
forty years?” 

“No, I do not think he meant that—I wish he 
did . . . oh, Joseph, how I wish it!” 

She buried her head in my coat and cried 
silently. I took her in my arms and tried to 
comfort her while she sobbed as if her heart 
would break, kissing me and crying alternately. 

“Are you afraid ... so afraid to give 
yourself to me because you feel I might not 
come up to your highest hope?” 

“No, I am afraid of nothing with you . . . 
you are my king, and I will, I will . . . but 
not to-night! To-morrow, Joseph, not before 
to-morrow, ah, I cannot tell ... I cannot 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


247 

explain . . . my tongue will not . . . 
Joseph . . . Joseph . . . forgive me, 
Joseph, it is foolishness to waste so perfect a 
day in tears. I have been so happy to-day. I 
do not think any woman who ever lived could 
have been more happy than I.” 

And after that, not one more serious word 
could I get out of her. She laughed and danced 
and chattered and hugged me alternately until 
we came within the precincts of the town of 
Lakeba. Then we went to the house somewhat 
more soberly, and at last, before we retired be¬ 
neath our separate mosquito curtains—for she 
insisted that it should be that way—we were 
able to have one long good-night, for Ellicot 
had not come home yet. 

“To-morrow?” I whispered. 

“To-morrow I shall be all yours, body and 
soul, to do what you like with for ever and 
ever . . 

“Amen . . .!” 

“Ammon . . . Good-night now, and give 

me the key of the medicine chest. I want some 
quinine.” 

I gave it to her and she helped herself, leav¬ 
ing the key in the box till the morrow. Ellicot 
might want it, too, for we all took a few grains 
of quinine every other day or so as a preventive 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


248 

against fever. The box was always kept locked 
in the daytime though, because the natives adore 
taking pills, and there were a few things, like 
formalin, veronal, and certain succulent-looking 
pink candies labelled “corrosive sublimate” 
which are not very good for anybody’s inside. 

So ended the happiest day of my life, which 
for Abus was not only the happiest, but the last. 
She appeared to be sleeping late the next morn¬ 
ing, and, knowing that she had had a tiring climb 
through the bush the day before and violent 
emotional excitement as well, I decided not to 
let her be disturbed until midday, if necessary. 
There was not a sound from behind her curtains 
at breakfast time, though Peniasi made more 
noise than there was any occasion for and we 
had to tell him several times to be careful, not 
to waken her. 

Ellicot, as usual, went out to fish with Maopa 
on the reef. He had become an enthusiast and 
he brought back all sorts of strange creatures 
which Peniasi seemed to recognize as human 
food. Many of them were excellent, too. I 
waited with a book on my knee which I was 
too impatient to read, to hear Abus give her 
first waking halloo, to be told what time it was. 
It never came. 

Suddenly I bethought me of the medicine- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


249 

chest key that was missing from my key-ring. 
I had no anxiety about it, but I went to lock the 
chest in case Penny might be tempted while he 
was doing the beds. When I opened the box 
I noticed absently that the new bottle of quinine 
had not been opened. I remembered, with a 
pang of fear, that the last bottle had been 
emptied the day before. There was a new bot¬ 
tle of tabloids—unbroken seal. I saw something 
else which took my breath away with the horror 
of it ... I rushed to Abus’s bed . . . 

She had taken veronal ... by mistake. 
By mistake? I cannot understand it to this day. 
The quinine was liquid . . . the veronal 

was in tabloids. 

Abus was dead, with a smile of the most beati¬ 
fic bliss on her face. She was almost cold and 
had therefore been dead for some hours. The 
anguish that came upon me beggars description 
even if I wanted to describe it. 

This is the story of Abus, and properly speak¬ 
ing it finishes with her death. But I must pay 
tribute to Ellicot, for his tact, kindness, and in¬ 
defatigable energy in doing everything for me 
and for her. During the hours of my suffering, 
when I think I was out of my mind, Ellicot told 
me, afterward, that I had kept repeating over 
and over again the name of my beloved, and the 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


250 

question which had so perplexed me on our last 
evening together. I kept saying, “Forty years 
. . . forty years . . . forty years!” 

It remained with me like an obsession for 
days and weeks afterward, but it was a long 
time before I could bring myself to speak of it 
to Ellicot. 

Ellicot made all the arrangements for the 
burial of Abus. There was an added horror for 
me, which Ellicot almost succeeded in keeping 
from me altogether, but a chance word forced 
it upon me. The Methodist missionary, whom 
Abus disliked so heartily, whose eyes, in her 
opinion, were “all wrong,” was the only white 
man representing the Christian religion nearer 
than Loma Loma or Taviuni, both a consider¬ 
able journey by sea. He appeared at the house 
soon after the news was abroad, like a kite from 
the blue . . . Ellicot drove him away. He 

became abusive when he was told that Abus 
would not be buried under the aegis of the Meth¬ 
odist Church. I doubt not she would have pre¬ 
ferred to be laid in the earth by her friends with 
no further ceremony than the dictates of love 
would suggest, but since that would have seemed 
disrespectful to her memory in the eyes of the 
natives, we decided on the only alternative 
course. She had known and liked Maopa’s 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


251 

father, so we allowed him to officiate at her 
burial in his own way. 

It was a native funeral: we wrapped her sweet 
body in the finest tappa that could be obtained, 
every strip of which was first soaked in poison 
distilled from a native root. The slim white 
mummy, so like history repeating itself to 
my eyes, was wrapped in mats and placed in a 
chest of camphor wood. She was buried there¬ 
fore by the Tongan Free Church, not far from 
the hot spring, near the place where we had 
told each other so many blessed things only one 
day ago, where she had been so happy. And if 
I succeeded in attaining to one moment of real 
prayer, at her grave’s side—God knows I tried 
—it was to express the hope that the smile with 
which she died might become eternal, until we 
meet again. 

We could not stay in Lakeba, of course, and 
were fortunate in being able to get a boat to take 
us direct to Suva. Ellicot suggested Samoa, but 
for me the beauty of the South Seas was dead. 
I could not bear the idea of it and longed to get 
back to some place which would not recall the 
idyllic, wonderful life we had enjoyed so deeply 
with Abus. A week later we were on our way 
to New Zealand, from which one can take a 
ship straight to San Francisco. I did not go 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


252 

ashore at any of the few stopping places, in the 
Cook Islands and at Tahiti. My one idea was 
to get back to the life of Europe and this seemed 
to be the most convenient way. We did not 
speak of Abus for many weeks. I think we 
were nearing the Golden Gate of San Francisco 
before we talked of her. It was then that Elli- 
cot told me of what I had said in my delirium 
of the first few hours. 

“Forty years!” He exclaimed suddenly when 
I told him what Abus had said on our walk back 
from the hot spring. “She told you that she 
had been married to you for forty years?” 

“Yes,” I replied. “She said that Theoboama 
had appeared to her on the day before and had 
told her that we had been married for that time. 
Can you throw any light on that? What do you 
think that can possibly mean?” 

“Forty years! Good Heavens, did she say 
that? Why, of course, don’t you remember what 
I told you in the story of Yusuf and Zuleikha? 
No, that’s so, I never finished the tale, I never 
finished the tale ... I remember now, we 
were interrupted, but I must finish it now. It 
is really astonishing! 

“When Joseph was told that the strange little 
woman in black who had followed him about 
for so long was no other than Potiphar’s dis- 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 253 

graced wife, the story tells that he was touched 
by her devotion and he made fuller enquiries 
about her. He found out that she had lost all 
her exquisite beauty through poverty and ex¬ 
posure, and moreover that she was almost blind. 
He made provision for her at once in a little 
house from which she could see his palace al¬ 
ways. That was her request. The story has 
always been one of the most popular themes for 
Persian and Arabian poets and has many vari¬ 
ants. Jami relates that Joseph prayed long and 
earnestly that her sight should be restored and 
Allah (Jami being a Mohammedan) granted 
his prayer and gave her back both her sight and 
her beauty. Then the angel Gabriel appeared 
to Joseph and instructed him to marry 
Zuleikha; nothing was said about his wife, but 
that of course would have been no objection. 
So they were married. And here’s the point of 
all this: the story tells expressly that Joseph lived 
happily with Zuleikha for a period of forty 
years, after which time he died and she died very 
soon after him. That is the tale which the 
Bible does not tell, a tale of enduring love to be 
reckoned with the best in human tradition, not 
merely an incident of mean, adulterous seduc¬ 
tion. It is based upon legend in the beginning, 
I suppose, but a legend quite as well founded as 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


2 54 

the bulk of our history can offer; it contains a 
foundation of truth and I see no reason why the 
details should not be fact also. Even with all 
the impossibilities common to oriental tales, the 
yarn rings true in my ears. I believe in them 
both, and the past few months have done some¬ 
thing to me, James, in a way I find it difficult 
to express. I have changed my views somewhat 
upon certain matters and I do not think it will 
prove a passing phase. Somehow I feel that 
we have touched the fringe of a great mystery, 
almost a discovery, a great romance certainly, a 
great . . . something. I cannot explain 

just what I mean in words, but I feel, in some 
inscrutable way, that coincidence in this case is 
a hypothesis too marvellous to be believed in. 
The explanation is more wonderful than the 
miracle. In other words, I feel in my bones that 
Abus was the reincarnation of Zuleikha, be¬ 
loved of Joseph and wife of Potiphar. It seems 
to me that I have never thought very seriously 
about such things before, Eve never believed in 
anything so deeply before, as I believe in this. 
What do any of us know of anything? We 
can only use the faculties we possess, and hither¬ 
to the faculties I possess have not enabled me 
to take very seriously the claims of any religion 
I know anything about. This is something 


EGYPTIAN LOVE 


2 S 5 

new; it has taken hold of me in a subconscious 
way. I have perceived without reasoning and 
become persuaded against my reason and every 
inclination. Anything which can do that is 
undeniable, I think. Isn’t that inspiration? I 
can imagine nothing else that could be. Isn’t 
that what the Christians mean by the ‘still small 
voice?’ It has supplied in my mind a logical 
reason far better than a general prohibition 
without a tangible and demonstrable reason why. 
Human relations mean more to me now than 
ever they did before: I cannot consider them 
lightly ... all lives are linked by action 
and action is eternal with all its results . . . 
certainly I believe that Abus was Potiphar’s 
wife . . 

“Then I must be . . . 1 ” 

“Well, James, if you believe in her . . 

THE END 



















